Following on from Chris Clay, Kimberly Baars, and the #scichatnz and #wellyed folks, our final guest during our N4L Presents webinar series was Steve Mouldey.
Steve is a teacher at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. He’s one of the most honest and thoughtful thinkers I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting with and his blog is filled with insights into really deliberate and articulated aspects of leading in a secondary teaching space.
For the last two and a half years he has been a foundation staff member at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, and during the webinar he reflects on the process by which he came to be there. He talks about unpacking the NZ curriculum, considering design issues to meet student needs and building a school environment from a blank slate. As well as the high-level thinking that went into HPSS, Steve unpacks some simple and practical techniques, like a “daily provocation” and shared ‘kitchen table’ sessions that schools could use to enthuse and continually engage their staff in a professional learning mindset.
Steve has also been a CORE e-Fellow over the last year, and one of his partners in that programme, Philippa Antipas, also joined in the conversation, to build on the idea of supporting teachers in their professional learning. Philippa is the Postgraduate Programme Director of The Mind Lab by Unitec in Wellington and her research on that subject, from her time as an e-Fellow, is available to read here.
Philippa finishes with a challenge to NZ educators to model the key competencies on a daily basis, and Steve makes a plea for schools to ensure that empathy, curiosity and questioning are continually fostered among staff and students.
This was a really enjoyable and engaging conversation to host, as both Steve and Philippa are wonderfully honest and reflective educators who speak from their hearts. Both are active users of Twitter, and you can follow Steve at https://twitter.com/GeoMouldeyon and Philippa at https://twitter.com/AKeenReader.