Nicky Ryan, principal Weston School, Oamaru, discusses her school’s approach to the key competencies from an adult perspective.
Published November 2009
Weston School is a decile seven, full primary school with a roll of 243 students.
We realised very quickly when exploring the key competencies, the same as values and principles, that this was something we as staff were going to have to know about.
So we decided to take on the key competencies from an adult perspective.
Nicky Ryan, principal
We had a very strong cornerstone values programme at our school and were finding it hard to separate the key competencies and values. Every time we tried we felt we were doing more work rather than less – we weren’t being efficient. We decided to review our values and take a fresh approach.
We began work with Cheryl Doig on developing a strong learning community. We looked at our school context and decided that ‘relating to others’ was the key competency most important for us, and would be our way into exploring the key competencies.
We started using this competency in the classroom, employing specific teaching approaches. Each syndicate produced a statement outlining what the competency meant to them. We realised very quickly that we were talking the talk but had to take a step back and ask ourselves if we were walking the walk.
We decided to take a look at the key competencies from an adult perspective, rewriting parts of our job descriptions with the key competencies in mind.
To explore this notion further we had a teacher only day focusing on 'relating to others' for adults. We realised as a professional body that critical and creative thinking is important for what we do, and so we examined our reflective processes. Teachers have all started reflective journals to look at their development of the key competency ‘relating to others’.
Everything we put in place for ourselves when investigating this key competency has a direct correlation to the classroom. All students now have journals where they make key competency goals and identify the steps they will take to achieve these. An example is one student who finds it hard to make friends. Through reflective journaling she has seen that her behaviour doesn’t illicit friends and now her goal is to make, and keep, friends by following certain steps she has put in place.
One main topic we pondered on at the teacher only day was 'should we assess the key competencies?' We decided that we wouldn’t like to judge each other as teachers and that the best learning came from making mistakes, so therefore this wasn’t something we wanted to assess. However it was something we wanted to be reflective of and observe our own progress. From this we saw the importance of students (and teachers) self monitoring their competencies.
