These ideas are symbolised in our Logo
The lower left represents the childcentred approach felt by critics from the 'new right' as too permissive and lacking rigour. The bottom right represents the traditional disciplined transmission style of teaching - criticised by liberal critics. The top of the triangle represents a creative fusion of the best of both. The logo can be interpreted as child centred, teacher centred and learning centred, or early childhood, secondary and for all ages.

Assumptions about learning underpin all points.
The challenge of this Newsletter is to clarify the values and teaching beliefs that underpin 'our' vision of the School As A Learning Community. We need to create schools that provide an engaging curriculum and a caring community, one that provides the conditions to cater for the social, emotional and intellectual development of all students.

'Community building must become the heart of any school improvement effort'.

Thomas Sergiovanni

Teaching Beliefs
What are the beliefs that underpin the metaphor of the School As A Community?
The following example was developed using the following process. Each teacher was asked to list their beliefs about teaching using for guidance headings suggested by the Ministry Performance Management Guidelines.
An independent adviser then drew them up into a draft format for teacher and final B.O.T. approval.
To be 'owned' all involved must feel they have had a democratic input and feel able to align themselves with the final document. This process will be an exercise in true democracy and may not always be an easy one. The process may well be the most important part.
The final Belief Statement / Teaching Framework represents a More Informed Vision of Education for the 21st C. It can easily be converted to a combined Job Description/ Performance Appraisal.
Schools who have developed such a Framework continue the process by building up resource folders of suggestions and 'best practices' for each point. Ideally a culture of continual quality improvement would be created, teachers involving themselves in 'action research ' projects as they see the need.

Shared Teaching Beliefs of Our School

Framework Points

1. We all need to work within the school Vision and Values and if we do this (and are supported by the home) we believe students can achieve far more than is currently expected. Therefore we will:
   • Align all teaching towards achieving the school Vision and Mission Statement and Associated policies and procedures. Our actions will contribute to development of a positive image for our school.
   • Show respect and friendliness to students, parents, all school visitors and help develop through our actions a role model for our students.
   • Contribute to a school that provides an environment of excellence, high expectations and persistent striving. Quality teaching and learning.
   • Develop a positive 'future orientation' in our students to work and help them see it is over to them to hold themselves accountable for doing quality work.
   • Negotiate with our students a class vision, within the vision of the school, and encourage appropriate behaviour based on school values.
   • Make every effort to build positive links with all our parents and make them feel welcome and informed about how they can help and aware of student progress.
   • Handle conflict and concerns in a open positive manner. Students will be aware of means to handle conflict positively.

     Indicate how well you have achieved this framework point.
     0----------------------------------10
     Areas of strength   -   Area for future development

     
     
2. We will make use of a range of Teaching Strategies to achieve our vision of caring independent learners capable of quality learning . Therefore we will:
   • Develop in our teaching a more positive 'coaching' role to help students set high personal but realistic standards for themselves.
   • Set challenging and realistic expectations for all students taking into account their individual needs and learning styles.
   • Help all students learn to appreciate the need for quality in all they do. We will encourage students to slow the pace of their work so they can develop the appropriate skills. Too many students rush their work thinking that first finished is best.
   • Ensure that all our students develop the basic literacy and numeracy skills so that they can apply these with confidence in all their learning. Traditional skills are still vital.
   • Use a Interactive Approach in our teaching based on student questions, their prior knowledge, and negotiated learning tasks, and the teaching of research skills.
   • Teach a range of explicit thinking skills and strategies so students become aware of the appropriate strategies and can use them independently - the basis of life long learning
   • Teach explicit co-operative learning skills so students can work together in teams.
   • Introduce new skills through focussed teaching by modelling and demonstrating until students can use them automatically. This is the coaching role.
   • Develop 'ownership' of learning by students by helping them set their own goals, and assess their own progress
   • Insure that students are confident with a range of information technology media.
     
     
3. We will deliver a balanced Curriculum, where possible helping students see connections between Learning Areas. Therefore we will:
   • Use the National Curriculum Framework to provide the guidance for classroom programmes.
   • Introduce learning to students by means of realistic projects, themes and units. Where possible these will be integrated. We want our students to be able to see connections between Learning Areas.
   • Learning objectives will be selected from the appropriate Curriculum Statements.
   • Use the local environment as and important learning resource.
   • Plan collaboratively with other teachers and also with the students themselves.
   • Integrate Information Technology into all learning.
     
     
4. Our teaching will focus on developing Self Motivated Learners. Therefore we will:
   • Ensure students develop positive self images through pride in self achievements.
   • Accept students for who they are and then help them to extend their learning repertoire by providing options and alternatives.
   • Provide a positive future orientated vision for the class based on the school values.
   • Make use of student personal interests and experiences where relevant e.g. for personal writing or class discussion and studies to demonstrate we value their life experiences and interests. We will encourage individual studies based on their interests.
   • Ensure the room environment celebrate students questions, their research and creative work in a way that both informs visitors and celebrate student creativity.
   • See the most important source of motivation as that coming from the pride of achieving their own goals and by being able to demonstrate success through quality achievement.
     
     
5. We will provide safe Classroom Management to allow quality independent learning and appropriate help. Therefore we will:
   • Ensure our classes presents a safe, predictable environment where students know what is expected of them and feel free enough to take the necessary learning risks.
   • Make use of whole class, group, and individual teaching as appropriate with an emphasis on well planned group work. The challenge is to provide focussed teaching to allow independent learning.
   • Start the teaching year reasonably formally until independent learning skills are established. We will see classroom management as a developmental process with independent group work developing as skills are taught.
   • The class vision will be reached in Term Four.
   • Ensure group organisations are clear to the students (on the whiteboard) to allow the teacher to focus on groups or individuals identified as needing help while the others carry on.
   • Share planning (negotiate) with the students to develop a sense of ownership
   • Appreciate that the morning is a good time to teach the basic skills students need to be able to work with independently in the afternoon during their content studies.
     
     
6. Our Planning and Preparation will ensure Quality Learning. Therefore we will:
   • Plan collaboratively class studies, organisations, and evaluation, to utilise each others strengths, and to help each other collegially as an example of our school vision.
   • Complete long term planning, unit planning (ensuring Learning Objectives are selected) and daily planning. We will also include students in our planning to develop 'ownership'.
   • Ensure our planning to follows agreed planning formats.
   • Plan to extend student skill in independent activity by providing guided choices.
   • Ensure students have available planning to allow them to work independently (e.g. on Taskboards/Blackboards).
   • Remember it is not always advisable to have the whole class involved in activity work if we want to able to challenge their thinking or conserve our energy, we need to have at least one group to focus on for intensive teaching.
   • Aim all our planning towards students being able to plan and assess their own studies, select their own questions, able to research and select appropriate presentation and media skills. Such self managing students will be seen as the best evidence of the success of our vision; quality learners.
     
     
7. Student progress will be monitored to Achieve Quality Learning Therefore we will:
   • Follow agreed school policy on assessment.
   • Keep data on the entry skills (including attitudinal data)of students to demonstrate growth to students and their parents?
   • Remember that all our teaching will be aimed at realising our school Vision , Values, and Mission and agreed student behaviour. Students should be aware of the vision and values of the school able to assess their own behaviour and learning.
   • Our Vision and Values will determine the focus for our teaching - we will keep in mind the vision of the attributes an ideal learner and encourage 'intelligent behaviour'. Students will be aware such attributes e.g the need for personal effort and 'stickability' - a 'have a go' 'mindset'.
   • Ensure all our teaching is focussed on achieving quality rather than quantity; depth rather than coverage, with every student achieving goals they understand. We will make clear to students what they are expected to learn from any activity.
   • Select appropriate learning objectives for learning tasks from the Curriculum Statements. It will be important for students to realise that these learning objectives cover attitudes and skills and not just content.
   • Negotiate with the students criteria so that they can learn to assess their own progress and set their own goals so that they can take a growing responsibility for their own quality improvement. They should be continually asked if the work they are doing is better than their last effort, why they think it so, and what they need to do next.
   • Ensure that parents are aware of any growth points worth celebrating by e.g informal home phone calls or notes along with more formal reporting.
   • Judge the success of our class by seeing how well they work independently when you are away, during wet lunch times, or when you are out of the room? This is the ultimate test of your class vision or culture.
     
     
8. Teachers will need to make a full contribution to the corporate life of the school and to the teaching team/syndicate. Therefore we will:
   • Feel aligned and positive about the Vision Values and Teaching Framework of the school and happy to share them with anyone interested.
   • Work willingly and cooperatively with other teachers, share and be open to new ideas, aware of the skills of other teachers, and able to ask for help when needed.
   • Be seen as a positive member of the teaching staff, participating in corporate activities.
   • Feel confident to confront felt concerns (between any members of the school community) openly so that issues can be resolved in a creative manner.
   • Make sure all school policies and procedures are adhered to.
   • Take every opportunity to gain professional development and be able to show evidence of the new ideas you have introduced into your class.