Philosophy
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Albert Einstein sums up the overall principles and purposes expressed in our focus on the People and the Land:
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Place based learning and culturally responsive place-based practice.
Changing the Cultural Face of our Environment:
Following a reflection on what could our Maori and Pacifica children in particular look to and lay claim to within our school’s physical environment that spoke particularly to them, a process of consulting, discussing and reflecting began. Out of this came a whole new front of school environment, featuring five huge Pōhatu Tūmu.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Place based learning and culturally responsive place-based practice.
Changing the Cultural Face of our Environment:
Following a reflection on what could our Maori and Pacifica children in particular look to and lay claim to within our school’s physical environment that spoke particularly to them, a process of consulting, discussing and reflecting began. Out of this came a whole new front of school environment, featuring five huge Pōhatu Tūmu.
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Foundation Values
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Benefit Mindset
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Child Responsive Practice
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These rocks as ancient as the earth represent the five foundation values our school is built on:
Whānangatanga - Family Always
Manaakitanga - Caring Always
Whakamana - Our Best Always.
Whakapono - The Truth Always.
Tūrangawaewae - Our Home Always.
These five Pōhatu Tūmu are at the heart and core of everything we do now. At one end is Whanaungatanga, at the other Tūrangawaewae. This represents the People and the Land - encompassing the other three.
Every class, at the start of each year comes out and sits on and among the rocks and hears the story of each one.
As we share and celebrate this sanctuary, we emphasise the universal nature of the values represented here. We share - and invite our children to share - how these stones connect to their culture, their stories, their values.
One of those core values is Manaakitanga
Caring for ourselves, others and our land
Kindness to ourselves, others and our land
We address kindness in many ways - through Bucket Filling, the Love in Love to Learn to Lead and through our focus on Pay It Forwards for every class every year. We also focus on Empathy and Service Leadership.
Our goal is to see Kindness become the Lingua Franca (meaning the language we all speak) of WHS - something that we address and aspire to every day.
This focus on kindness is designed to ensure we are educating the whole child, and best preparing them to be caring, contributing, connected citizens. Such qualities will be of increasing value and importance as robots and AI take take over more and more traditional jobs and workforce tasks. This also offers the opportunity to ensure collaborative learning focused solutions to improve teaching and learning practice.
Each class chooses their own ‘Pay It Forward’ project each year. This is an opportunity for children to get together and research needs in their school, community or even wider world.
They select the need to address and draw up an action plan to achieve it. In many cases, this is a complex endeavour involving all manner of communication, planning, organising and doing. One recent example was when two classes got together and organised a shipping container of supplies to go to Fiji following a cyclone there.
The logistics involved were considerable, and the learning was real-world, hands-on and particularly meaningful. The satisfaction and pride our children experienced was greater than anything a typical maths or social studies lesson could achieve.
There is evidence this is an important approach for us to take as educators, represented as the Benefit Mindset.
Some years ago we introduced Growth Mindset to our teachers and our WHS community. It has become a useful tool in our teaching and learning toolbox.
When I first began at WHS, one of the first things I introduced was a "Pay It Forward" expectation for every class, every year.
It was part of a focus I believe passionately in - 'growing caring, connected, collaborative, concerned, contributing citizens'.
Reading, Writing and Numeracy are the foundation learning is built upon. Active care and concern that leads to cooperative care for our community (the people and the land) is the foundation society is built upon. Without it we have a selfish world where individuals trying to win at the expense of others - me first - ensure we all lose in the long run.
This approach is encapsulated in a new concept defined as a 'Benefit Mindset'. It also ties in very well with another idea I brought with me - Bucket Filling. A bucket-filler knows that they can only fill their own 'happiness and good things' bucket by being kind to others. Being unkind - a bucket-dipper - can empty someone else's bucket but it will never fill yours.
If we ask what does it really mean to be successful in business — and in life?
The Benefit Mindset answer is simply: to be a pulse of hope — on purpose.
Rather than being driven by individual gain, we find there is real value, in being of value — to ourselves, to others, to nature and to the future.
It is a purpose-driven mindset that is redefining success; we move from seeking to be the best in the world, to being the best for the world.
It is the Benefit Mindset.
Whānangatanga - Family Always
Manaakitanga - Caring Always
Whakamana - Our Best Always.
Whakapono - The Truth Always.
Tūrangawaewae - Our Home Always.
These five Pōhatu Tūmu are at the heart and core of everything we do now. At one end is Whanaungatanga, at the other Tūrangawaewae. This represents the People and the Land - encompassing the other three.
Every class, at the start of each year comes out and sits on and among the rocks and hears the story of each one.
As we share and celebrate this sanctuary, we emphasise the universal nature of the values represented here. We share - and invite our children to share - how these stones connect to their culture, their stories, their values.
One of those core values is Manaakitanga
Caring for ourselves, others and our land
Kindness to ourselves, others and our land
We address kindness in many ways - through Bucket Filling, the Love in Love to Learn to Lead and through our focus on Pay It Forwards for every class every year. We also focus on Empathy and Service Leadership.
Our goal is to see Kindness become the Lingua Franca (meaning the language we all speak) of WHS - something that we address and aspire to every day.
This focus on kindness is designed to ensure we are educating the whole child, and best preparing them to be caring, contributing, connected citizens. Such qualities will be of increasing value and importance as robots and AI take take over more and more traditional jobs and workforce tasks. This also offers the opportunity to ensure collaborative learning focused solutions to improve teaching and learning practice.
Each class chooses their own ‘Pay It Forward’ project each year. This is an opportunity for children to get together and research needs in their school, community or even wider world.
They select the need to address and draw up an action plan to achieve it. In many cases, this is a complex endeavour involving all manner of communication, planning, organising and doing. One recent example was when two classes got together and organised a shipping container of supplies to go to Fiji following a cyclone there.
The logistics involved were considerable, and the learning was real-world, hands-on and particularly meaningful. The satisfaction and pride our children experienced was greater than anything a typical maths or social studies lesson could achieve.
There is evidence this is an important approach for us to take as educators, represented as the Benefit Mindset.
Some years ago we introduced Growth Mindset to our teachers and our WHS community. It has become a useful tool in our teaching and learning toolbox.
When I first began at WHS, one of the first things I introduced was a "Pay It Forward" expectation for every class, every year.
It was part of a focus I believe passionately in - 'growing caring, connected, collaborative, concerned, contributing citizens'.
Reading, Writing and Numeracy are the foundation learning is built upon. Active care and concern that leads to cooperative care for our community (the people and the land) is the foundation society is built upon. Without it we have a selfish world where individuals trying to win at the expense of others - me first - ensure we all lose in the long run.
This approach is encapsulated in a new concept defined as a 'Benefit Mindset'. It also ties in very well with another idea I brought with me - Bucket Filling. A bucket-filler knows that they can only fill their own 'happiness and good things' bucket by being kind to others. Being unkind - a bucket-dipper - can empty someone else's bucket but it will never fill yours.
If we ask what does it really mean to be successful in business — and in life?
The Benefit Mindset answer is simply: to be a pulse of hope — on purpose.
Rather than being driven by individual gain, we find there is real value, in being of value — to ourselves, to others, to nature and to the future.
It is a purpose-driven mindset that is redefining success; we move from seeking to be the best in the world, to being the best for the world.
It is the Benefit Mindset.
The Benefit Mindset
“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value” — Albert Einstein
The Benefit Mindset describes society’s everyday leaders who look beyond growth, to promote wellbeing on both an individual and a collective level.
The Benefit Mindset builds on Carol Dweck’s pioneering research, on how beliefs about the nature of intelligence can profoundly shape the lives we lead and the actions we take. This framework takes her Fixed and Growth Mindset to the next level — towards a richer definition of success.
What sets everyday leaders and teachers apart from their everyday achieving counterparts is how they aspire to discover their strengths, in order to meaningfully contribute to causes that are greater than the self. They question ‘why’ they do what they do, and believe in making a meaningful difference.
The Benefit Mindset gets to the heart of who we need to be and how we need to relate with others, in order to do what we want to do.
This new psychology is particularly evident in the Positive Education movement — schooling that looks beyond academic success to promote whole-person flourishing. It can also be seen in new concepts, such as Net Positive, that are redefining success in sustainability, from minimising negative footprints to maximising positive handprints.
There is a common expectation that being a ‘success’ will make you happy — the science of positive psychology is showing this isn’t exactly correct.
While success might make you happy in the short term, it doesn’t last. There is always going to be another mountain to climb, and the pursuit of success tends to lock people into a deficit cycle — always pursuing bigger and better successes.
Everyday leaders and teachers with a Benefit Mindset take a different approach. They see happiness and accomplishment as a by-product of meaningful contribution — by doing something of great value that is intrinsically motivating.
By connecting the dots between individual wellbeing and collective betterment, these purpose-driven leaders and teachers empower their people - employees and students.
Developing everyday leaders and teachers could be one of the best points of leverage we have for liberating human potential — and simultaneously bringing out the best in us, in business and the planet.
We are people makers. Growing people who have a Benefit Mindset approach will lead to greater individual and collective happiness, satisfaction, and achievement, and help ensure we have a world we all want to live in.
Robust culturally responsive practice is about addressing the place, purpose and value of each child’s culture to not just their learning but their personhood.
Culturally Responsive Practice is often shortened to CRP. I would take some poetic licence with the letters CRP and contend that they could more appropriately be considered as standing for Child Responsive Practice.
“Tapasa” (2018) advises us that, “teachers are responsible for groups of learners with histories, perspectives, values and cultures that may differ from their own. These differences can even vary between each learner, in significant ways.” In other words, Culturally Responsive Practice is not enough. There can be so many differences with the culture, that Child Responsive Practice within culturally responsive practice is that which is required of us to be effective facilitators of learning for all learners.
“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value” — Albert Einstein
The Benefit Mindset describes society’s everyday leaders who look beyond growth, to promote wellbeing on both an individual and a collective level.
The Benefit Mindset builds on Carol Dweck’s pioneering research, on how beliefs about the nature of intelligence can profoundly shape the lives we lead and the actions we take. This framework takes her Fixed and Growth Mindset to the next level — towards a richer definition of success.
What sets everyday leaders and teachers apart from their everyday achieving counterparts is how they aspire to discover their strengths, in order to meaningfully contribute to causes that are greater than the self. They question ‘why’ they do what they do, and believe in making a meaningful difference.
The Benefit Mindset gets to the heart of who we need to be and how we need to relate with others, in order to do what we want to do.
This new psychology is particularly evident in the Positive Education movement — schooling that looks beyond academic success to promote whole-person flourishing. It can also be seen in new concepts, such as Net Positive, that are redefining success in sustainability, from minimising negative footprints to maximising positive handprints.
There is a common expectation that being a ‘success’ will make you happy — the science of positive psychology is showing this isn’t exactly correct.
While success might make you happy in the short term, it doesn’t last. There is always going to be another mountain to climb, and the pursuit of success tends to lock people into a deficit cycle — always pursuing bigger and better successes.
Everyday leaders and teachers with a Benefit Mindset take a different approach. They see happiness and accomplishment as a by-product of meaningful contribution — by doing something of great value that is intrinsically motivating.
By connecting the dots between individual wellbeing and collective betterment, these purpose-driven leaders and teachers empower their people - employees and students.
Developing everyday leaders and teachers could be one of the best points of leverage we have for liberating human potential — and simultaneously bringing out the best in us, in business and the planet.
We are people makers. Growing people who have a Benefit Mindset approach will lead to greater individual and collective happiness, satisfaction, and achievement, and help ensure we have a world we all want to live in.
Robust culturally responsive practice is about addressing the place, purpose and value of each child’s culture to not just their learning but their personhood.
Culturally Responsive Practice is often shortened to CRP. I would take some poetic licence with the letters CRP and contend that they could more appropriately be considered as standing for Child Responsive Practice.
“Tapasa” (2018) advises us that, “teachers are responsible for groups of learners with histories, perspectives, values and cultures that may differ from their own. These differences can even vary between each learner, in significant ways.” In other words, Culturally Responsive Practice is not enough. There can be so many differences with the culture, that Child Responsive Practice within culturally responsive practice is that which is required of us to be effective facilitators of learning for all learners.
Child Responsive Practice requires of us the understanding that each child is a story - that incorporates their culture, language, name but is also so much more than that. As quoted at the start of this dissertation, CRP is understood to be “culturally supported, learner-centred context, whereby the strengths students bring to school are identified, nurtured, and utilised to promote student achievement” Richards, Brown, & Forde, 2006.
At an Apple Distinguished Educators’ Conference in Sydney recently I listened to an Aboriginal Film-maker as he shared his life story.
He told us how traditional school had failed him - he found no meaning, no connection and no purpose in school. He left school as soon as he could, and began on a path of dissolute behaviour and petty crime.
Fortunately an intervention programme put him into the outback with two Aboriginal elders. He was given a video camera and he used it to record his education at the hands of these elders. He documented their daily lives in a way that had not been done before. He learned through Original Practice. He learned through the incorporation of the Four Original Languages. He learned real-world and hands-on. He connected with and engaged his culture, language and identity. He married new technologies and modern thinking with ancient ways of learning, living and being.
As he stretched his arms out across the screen on which the black and white images of these elders moved, he connected again, and we his audience were deeply moved and connected in our own ways. I was so moved I had to leave the room for a tangi in a quiet place.
For me this exemplified the marriage that Culturally Responsive Practice requires of us as educators.
The partners in this marriage are the cultural heritage, passions and interests of the child, partnering the opportunities and power of digital media, story-telling, visual language, music and movement - the four original languages.
This young man’s life was turned completely around. The learning he gained and that could in turn be shared - with the world - was as deep, powerful, impactful and meaningful as any learning could be.
Obviously our learning environment, staffing and budgetary constraints mean that fully replicating this young man’s experience is not possible for most. However, it shows us what best practice can achieve. It shows us a way forward - by looking to the past and bringing that with us as we embrace the 21st tools available to us and walk bravely backwards into the future.
The Reality is we have the school values, philosophies, pedagogical and relational practices in place to ensure our Pacifica students feel a sense of belonging and identity unique to their culture but more importantly, unique to them as individuals.
At an Apple Distinguished Educators’ Conference in Sydney recently I listened to an Aboriginal Film-maker as he shared his life story.
He told us how traditional school had failed him - he found no meaning, no connection and no purpose in school. He left school as soon as he could, and began on a path of dissolute behaviour and petty crime.
Fortunately an intervention programme put him into the outback with two Aboriginal elders. He was given a video camera and he used it to record his education at the hands of these elders. He documented their daily lives in a way that had not been done before. He learned through Original Practice. He learned through the incorporation of the Four Original Languages. He learned real-world and hands-on. He connected with and engaged his culture, language and identity. He married new technologies and modern thinking with ancient ways of learning, living and being.
As he stretched his arms out across the screen on which the black and white images of these elders moved, he connected again, and we his audience were deeply moved and connected in our own ways. I was so moved I had to leave the room for a tangi in a quiet place.
For me this exemplified the marriage that Culturally Responsive Practice requires of us as educators.
The partners in this marriage are the cultural heritage, passions and interests of the child, partnering the opportunities and power of digital media, story-telling, visual language, music and movement - the four original languages.
This young man’s life was turned completely around. The learning he gained and that could in turn be shared - with the world - was as deep, powerful, impactful and meaningful as any learning could be.
Obviously our learning environment, staffing and budgetary constraints mean that fully replicating this young man’s experience is not possible for most. However, it shows us what best practice can achieve. It shows us a way forward - by looking to the past and bringing that with us as we embrace the 21st tools available to us and walk bravely backwards into the future.
The Reality is we have the school values, philosophies, pedagogical and relational practices in place to ensure our Pacifica students feel a sense of belonging and identity unique to their culture but more importantly, unique to them as individuals.