The Power of Future Focussed
Holistic Education
It is now
several weeks since Waterloo School’s production, ‘Going Places’ played to our
school community. As a staff we all hesitated at taking on this whole school
production in our modest school hall. With a roll of 555 students it seemed a
daunting task to be able to give all the children a meaningful experience on
stage. Initially the logistics of doing this just seemed too hard but it had been
a few years since the last whole school production and we sensed the time was
right to ‘give it a whirl’. We collectively decided we didn’t want to just buy
in a scripted show as we felt it would not engage much thinking or ownership
and only a few ‘stars’ would benefit from the experience.
The term
proved to be tough with record breaking sickness amongst the children and the
staff. The winter grey tones greeted most days making us wonder if the rain and
cold would ever retreat.
As a staff
we had settled on an inquiry theme of ‘Migration’ to delve into with the
children. With 23 ethnicities in the school we felt it to be a potentially
powerful topic being so relevant to our families and the children’s lives. It
coincided with our country deciding to up the number of refugees we would allow
into New Zealand, supporting the importance of embracing diversity.
As it
turned out these decisions, firstly an end of term production and then to study
‘Migration’, proved to be a mighty combination.
With an
initial whole staff planning brainstorm on the large whiteboard in the staff
room, the individual teachers set off with a great deal of autonomy to ‘frame
out’ with their teams how the inquiry concept could unfold. There were so many
sub factors within the theme such as human migration, animal migration, the
‘push and pull’ factors of migration and so much more.
Everyone
got into it and before we knew it, mid-term arrived allowing us just 5 weeks to
start planning for our production. It made so much sense to use our migration
theme as the focus and quickly the production title of ‘Going Places’ was
settled on. A small group of production enthusiasts led the way empowering the
classes to use their creativity to come up with their focus item(s)
representing their learning. A child was selected from each year group to form
a group that ended up being called the ‘bus stop kids’. The idea was for these
6 children to ‘bump into’ each other at the bus stop a little confused to where
they were going and where they had come from. Their intermittent brief
conversations were the links that merged the various items to make the
production merge into a meaningful whole with the final message from Year 6 boy
Archit:
Migration
has brought us all together. To come half way around the world has taken
courage and resilience. We all have the opportunity, but more so, the
responsibility to embrace and learn from each other’s cultures. That would
bring respect, peace and aroha to the world. Imagine that! Thanks for
coming tonight.
It
was powerful and authentic stuff, whether it was thinking deeply about the
theme of migration and its many sub questions (e.g. aren’t we all migrants?) to
the team work required to present the items. We all worked hard trying to
do our best get all our students on stage in the old school hall—beauty came
with this simplicity. What will be remembered is the creativity of the items,
the expressive dance, the individual family stories of migration, the stirring
singing and the musical items.
The whole
process was remarkably seamless and harmonious. The community absolutely loved
it and we received many lovely emails and posts on social media which of course
was very nice to hear. This is quote from an email from a
parent represents the type of feedback we received.
"I expected that
I would enjoy the parts that had my kids in it, but to otherwise not be as
completely entertained and diverted and at times quite emotionally affected by
all of the performances as I was. I laughed. I at times almost cried. It was just
so incredibly good that I still can’t quite believe it. Absolute credit to all
of the staff, parents and students."
But the point of this article is not to ‘promote’ our school production but to focus on a few things that can get lost in the plethora of demands placed on schools.
But the point of this article is not to ‘promote’ our school production but to focus on a few things that can get lost in the plethora of demands placed on schools.
Firstly,
the whole experience was uplifting with the children loving it. They were able
to ‘live out’ what they had been engrossed in with their inquiry studies. It
was such powerful and authentic learning.
Accidentally
we had created something that you can’t buy in from any professional learning
course or from any consultant.
All
educators know that once you connect children with an authentic and/or
meaningful context they are intrinsically motivated. They are self-driven to
inquiry (agency) and the ‘heart’ of this motivation (the theme Migration)
floated on a sea of dispositions or competencies. Collaboration, risk taking,
resilience, creativity, problem solving, meta-cognition, flexibility and
self-management were just some of these which came into ‘active’ play during
this rich learning experience.
This was
‘home grown’ from the ground up with all involved. The staff’s good will from
reception through to the caretaker was exceptional and the whole experience
turned out to be a very effective unplanned team building experience.
Lastly
and as an aside, this experience once again proved that the arts are a
conduit to the academics and are a good test of the pulse of any school.
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