T.C Sos Dept : Welcoming in the new year 2022 with our first Social Sciences Department meeting.

I always feel nervous when starting a new year with my department.  I think it’s because I want to make sure they feel encouraged and motivated and the first meeting could essentially set the tone for the year.  We have so much to cover so I have to try and make sure to get the right balance of administration, planning, feedback etc etc.

We started by reconnecting and giving everyone a chance to share their thoughts with two initial guiding questions:

It was nice to hear everyone’s feedback and goals for the school year and we were all hopeful that covid would not be such a huge impact in our year looking ahead.

Next we brainstormed some strategies to build relationships and get to know our kids.

Our first school goal is around raising Maori achievement.  For our new year 9’s, I wanted them to know our school pepeha as well as introduce themselves by writing theirs and sharing it with the class.   It tells people who you are by sharing your connections with the people and places that are important to you and for our new students, those connections should be valued and brought to the forefront.

To role model to our kids what a pepeha could look like, I invited my team to write theirs or share one they have with our department.  

We all stood individually to share our pepeha.  We have one new staff member who is joining us from another department and it was nice to hear him share his pepeha with us as well as to hear from each other.  Our team agreed that it was a nice way to share who we are and to build a sense of collegiality within our department.  To me, it is important to build trust and respect with my colleagues who will share the same goals and the same purpose in wanting the best for our kids.  It’s my hope that as the head of department, I can support my team in all areas of their teaching and learning so that we can have an exciting and successful year.

Peter is new to our team and shared his pepeha.

Janish shared her pepeha

As an aside, our Puriri house in 2021, I created a short video showing our School’s Pepeha.  This was done during lockdown for our Te reo Māori language week and we plan to show this during our first week with our year 9’s.