Nau mai ki tenei wiki Kōrero. Whānau Manaaki’s website has been redeveloped and the new site will go live later this month. The new site will work better on mobile phones and it has greater security features. The new website will be a work in progress, there will be some kindergartens without a team photo on their kindergarten pages or the photos are out of date. If you have any new team photos just send them through to Mollie Coulton and she will upload them to the site for you. Waiho i te toipoto, kaua it te toiroa Let us keep close together, not wide apart. Karen 
Things Are Changing in Our Offices In the Regional Meetings last year, Mandy talked about how we have been reviewing our operations in the Whanganui and Porirua Offices. We looked at our systems and processes and as a result developed Tūhonohono, adopted Jobadder - our online recruitment system, Staffsync, and just recently our new credit card system Fraedom. This was all designed to improve efficiency and provide consistency across our 100+ services. Over the past few months we’ve also looked at our office structure and have made some changes. As you know, Jane Braun decided she wanted to move on from her role as Deputy Chief Executive, and so instead of maintaining a Deputy Chief Executive position, we have established a new Senior Leadership Structure. Part of that new structure includes the creation of an Operations Team. This team will be led by a Chief Operations Officer – a position we are in the process of filling. We are also in the process of appointing a Communications Manager, a Hauora Advisor, and a Human Resources Advisor. Once the advertised appointments are made (which we’re hopeful will be by the end of June), we’ll update you again on where we’re at with everything. We’ve also created Team Lead positions within our Human Resources Team and Navigators Team. We currently have a Team Leader Transport who is Toafia (Moz) Mao, and a Team Leader Visiting Teachers, who is Carly Perrot – they have been highly successful Team Leaders for the past few years. The Team Lead structure gives opportunity for career development and also enables responsive leadership to issues as they arise on a day to day basis. We’re pleased to let you know that the new Team Leaders are: Ellen Talbot Team Leader Payroll, Leigh Comeskey Team Leader Human Resources, and Alice Sooalo Team Leader Community Navigators. All of this is designed to ensure the Association has the platforms, structure, and systems and processes to keep it strong during the coming years of growth and change. With Remutaka and Wellington Associations merging to form Whānau Manaaki in 2014, then Whanganui joining in 2019, plus our ECE and social services growing, our older ways of working needed to be reviewed. As part of all of this, we’re also aware that for some of you, the connectivity and ability to access technology is variable (translation for “hit and miss”). This is a priority for us over the coming months as well. Some of it is about supply of goods proving difficult because of Covid and some of it is about the infrastructure of technology within certain towns and areas. Thank you for your patience around these issues, it is something we take seriously and are working hard to sort through. If you do have any technology queries please get in touch with Tania.
Senior Teacher Update Kia ora koutou katoa, Te Manawa Team Discussions-next two weeks As mentioned in previous Kōrero, we are not having Regional Meetings in venues this term, instead we have planned for teams to take the time to discuss Te Manawa further. This planned kōrero is a follow on from the Head Teacher meetings and provides you with some of the collated feedback from across all our regions, as well as tasks and tips to support your team kōrero. On Friday, each kindergarten will receive an email with the planned mahi. New Head Teachers Meeting Term 2 Monday 28th June at Te Puna, WMK offices 10am to 3pm. Supporting Social and Emotional Competency Webinar As part of our commitment to provide multiple ways for professional learning we have developed a webinar for our Social and Emotional Competency Strategy. This webinar is designed to be an interactive resource. You can control how much and how often you want to view and engage with it. It is a self-directed resource which you can dip in and out of in your own time. The webinar can be used by an individual and or collaboratively within your team. The whole presentation could be used for Tōmua /Pūmau kaiako as part of Induction and Mentoring, and equally teams can use specific sections to support the writing of your Social Competency procedure. There are multiple opportunities and provocations for the development of an internal evaluation, designing an inquiry question or even to support the development of specific teaching strategies. A ‘How to use this webinar” guide is also provided as an additional tool to support your professional conversations and learning. The webinar can be found through this link, Open plan | Storypark within the Social Competency Plan. The screen shot below shows you where to find it under ‘PLD, Webinar and Readings’. 
Te Whāriki-Online If you are looking for more resources, the Senior Teacher team recommend visiting New Curriculum resources. The TKI website has just been updated for ease of use, and provides a selection of resources and workshops to support our teaching practices. Check it out! Induction and Mentoring Seminar 16 July We are looking forward to seeing all PCT’s and Mentors at our July seminar for 2021-Please remember that your attendance at our seminars is an important requirement for completing your Induction and Mentoring programme. As you may know already, we made some changes to the way we are running our seminars this year. As we have over twenty kaiako who hold a Tōmua (or Provisional Practicing certificate) and their mentors engaging in our Induction and Mentoring Programme, we are running our seminars in clusters in your region so that we meet the group size requirements of HWM PLD. The two workshops in this seminar are strongly linked to the Standard for the Teaching Profession and focus on : - Reflective Practice-linking with the Professional Growth Cycle
- Leaderful Practice
We are just finalising the venues for the regional clusters in Upper Hutt and Wellington City and there will be one at our Porirua office. The Whanganui cluster will be offered at a later date. As there is less travel involved using this cluster model, the seminar now starts at9.00am and finishes at 1.00pm (this is a change from the time advertised in the PLD calendar). Enrolments in the clusters will be open on Tūhonohono from next week. Please enrol in the cluster that you would like to attend so that we can have enough resources (and morning tea 😉) at each one. Please talk with your Senior Teacher if you have any questions, or contact Lynette.
Facebook - Remember To Make Short Posts Regularly And Note We Are Now Using 'Social Bee' It’s great to see so many kindergartens posting on Facebook each week. In terms of making the most of social media, it’s good to post once or twice a week if you can. It’s also better to post briefly and often, rather than, say, 25 photos at once, most of which will not get seen. If you include up to four photos at a time, these will display well on the page. If you have a lot of photos that you want to put up, say from a trip, you can break them up into three posts – for example ‘Children enjoyed the bus ride – (bus photos) They enjoyed Te Papa – (more photos) then lunchtime (more photos) etc. If you post often you don’t need to worry about including everyone, just the best photos – as children will appear over time. If you need help you can contact Mollie at the Whānau Manaaki office. The marketing team has also been using a new platform called Social Bee which allows us to post to several pages at once. This is particularly useful for regional events, such as kindergarten galas or other fundraisers, and things like free days at the zoo or family centred festivals. If you see a post on your page from Social Bee, don’t worry – it has come from the Whānau Manaaki office. You can edit these posts if you need to. Before sharing a regional post, check it hasn’t been shared to your page already.
Review Recommends Smaller Classes, More Teacher Aides And Investment In Māori Education An independent review into staffing levels in primary schools has described the current system as broken. The report Pūoatanga was released at Parliament today. Former Education Minister Steve Maharey led a review panel that travelled the country listening to teachers, principals and others as well as receiving several thousand submissions. Steve Maharey said the recommendations came after listening to story after story from teachers wanting to be freed up to teach, principals wanting to be freed up to lead, and Māori and Pacific educators wanting children to succeed at school. Learning support was described as one of the most effective areas to invest in. The report recommends schools are allocated one teacher aide for every 50 students, by 2023 increasing to one for every 24 students by 2030. It also recommends lowering class sizes over time, and investing more in Māori and Pacific immersion education. Here’s a link to the full report. Introducing Our Itinerant Relievers  Ann Anton is relieving in Porirua and the northern parts of Wellington city over the two winter terms. She’s enjoying the role having returned to kindergarten after a fulltime position elsewhere. “I returned to Whānau Manaaki as they really do look after their teachers/staff. “ Ann says she also gets paid more working in kindergarten. “I missed my teachers’ pay rate in my previous role as I didn't get recognised for all my years of study.” She is enjoying the certainty of work that the itinerant relieving position brings, as well as “meeting so many amazing teachers and beautiful children who I get to learn from.”
Have You Misplaced Your Jacket Someone has left behind a Kathmandu jacket at Bellevue Kindergarten. The team think it could have been one of our relievers. It is a black gortex one. Please get in touch with the team there if it is yours.
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