2018
Our Kāhui Ako was established with Graeme Budler and Kent Wilson being joint Lead principals. Vanessa Gatman and Colette Budler were appointed as Across School Leaders. Our three progress aspirations were agreed upon: English Language Learners (ELL’s), Student Wellbeing and Key Competencies. We later learned that Kent Wilson, the then principal of Westminster Christian School, had been seeking the Lord for a partnership with other Christian Schools in the area for over eight years. Ki Atua hei te Kororia: To God be the Glory!
2019
In our inaugural year, we gained significant ground as a Community of Learning. A strong sense of unity and purpose was felt amongst our schools as we started to see the benefit of identifying and utilising our strengths across the three schools.
2020
The key focus was to improve student outcomes of our English Second Language Learners. Throughout the year our staff had professional development on acquiring practical strategies to teach students based on the ESOL Principles. To reinforce the PLD, a series of short videos were produced to demonstrate strategies to boost understanding.
2021
Despite the setback of experiencing lockdowns, most staff were able to report that they had become increasingly confident in employing ESOL strategies which have been proven to raise student achievement. In addition to this, we sought to introduce some Wellbeing initiatives to enable our students to navigate the increasing complexities of life. To this end, much work was done by Chris Martin, Cherie Wallace and the Kahui Ako to produce a student questionnaire to discover where students were at in respect to their wellbeing.
2022
Each of our schools began started work on their Wellbeing Frameworks. Much ground had been lost due to Covid in the previous year and we worked together to gain more traction to help staff with Student Wellbeing. This was an imperative after the effects of lockdown were becoming increasingly apparent. We had a Teacher Only Day devoted mainly to raising awareness of how to improve mental wellbeing and strategies teachers could use in their classrooms.
2023
The focus was to embed the ESOL principles into teachers’ planning and then see these being naturally and authentically outworked into classroom lessons for the benefit of all ako, but in particular, our English Language Learners.
Effective student wellbeing strategies that linked to our three schools’ wellbeing frameworks were initiated and shared through staff meetings, team meetings and optional PD. Collaborative Inquiry on one of our progress aspirations was undertaken by each WSL and ASL and subsequently shared with the staff and senior leaders. The Kāhui Ako website went live and is an excellent resource where teaching staff can access a variety of effective strategies and up-to-date presentations based on supporting English Language Learners and raising student wellbeing outcomes.