About Pūtoi Rito Communities of Readers

Speakers

Barbara Cavanagh — Principal Huntly College, Melanie Mounsey — Student Huntly College, Bridget Schaumann — Facilitator Services to Schools, Elizabeth Jones, Director Literacy and Learning Services to Schools, Michaela Pinkerton — Deputy Principal Huntly College, Pip Laufiso — Education Advisor Priority Learners, Ministry of Education, Kirsten Glengarry — Relationship Manager, Ara Toi, Dunedin City Council, Katie-Rose Janmaat — student Huntly College, Jacinda Ardern — Prime Minister of New Zealand, Louise Waho — Kaiwhakahaere, Site Manager, Rangiora Oranga Tamariki, Jan Swarbrick — Case Manager, Work and Income, Pete Chaplin — Assistant Principal Kingslea School, Crissi Blair — Facilitator National Capability Services to Schools, Heather Howe — Associate Principal, West Harbour School, Tien Ngahere — Student Huntly College, some unidentified students.

Barbara Cavanagh: It's about valuing it and then being able to say to a student hey, you know this is really cool.

Melanie Mounsey: It's now Oh people at Huntly college read.

Bridget Schaumann: The feedback that we've had has just been overwhelmingly
enthusiastic.

Elizabeth Jones: Communities of readers is a collective impact project working with four very different communities across New Zealand to grow reading for pleasure and well-being for children and young people.

Each of the communities has its own focus but they all are based on the understanding that if we want to grow a nation of readers you need communities to do that.

And you can't leave it either to chance or to sole individuals.

Michaela Pinkerton: This is exciting and fantastic work. Because one of the things that story reading does is it gives people a place to escape, it gives people a place to become who they are, it gives them a place to build their brains, their minds,their hearts and that fortifies them against some of the stuff that we're experiencing in our lives. So it's really important work.

Pip Laufiso: If you have communities that already exist and then they have an opportunity to have a focus on reading.

Michaela Pinkerton: People all love story.

Kirsten Glengarry: We can all see the benefits of reading, the value of what's happening here and the difference we can make in young people's lives.

Barbara Cavanagh: They've got to have opinions, they've got to understand
how the world works.

Our community of readers is about building the readership of our young people here at Huntly College but alongside teachers,building teachers as readers so
that we can promote reading together.

Not only does reading allow us to understand other's stories but it allows us the
tools to tell our own.

Katie-Rose Janmaat: We believe here at Huntly college that Huntly college is
a school for leaders. And we also believe that leaders are readers, that's one of our biggest mottos here at Huntly college and I believe it wholeheartedly, I 100% back it.

Jacinda Ardern: I heard a bit of a theme of the influence of others in turning you to books, someone who encourages and who really stands up and
says why it is so important.

Tien Ngahere: At Huntly college we are very privileged to have a principal that understands and respects the importance of reading.

Barbara Cavanagh: What the community of readers has done for us has built a real support and partnership with the National Library and it's kind of raised
our level of expectation I suppose or excitement around reading.

Michaela Pinkerton: A very significant event was the National Library Speed Date a Genre event which literally brought people into a space where they were encouraged to take as many books as they wanted.

What are you interested in? What's happening for you? And people loaded up
with books and then went back to class and were reading avidly and teachers are saying, we just didn't expect to see that. So there was a huge
paradigm shift as a result.

Our community is primarily our young people. But they are connected to
whānau members, the brothers, the sisters, the primary school and the town as well. So for us community is really big.

But we're starting with the community that we have direct relationships with, in the most easy way and that's our young people.

Bridget Schaumann: The Community of Readers is a project bringing lots and
lots of picture books and junior fiction books to the children of South Dunedin.

The project is all about encouraging a love of reading.

Kirsten Glengarry: The focus of the Communities of Readers project is on the three to seven-year-old age group. We realise that, that's key for students moving from early childhood and to school.

How important it is to start early and be good readers from then.

Pip Laufiso: The co-design project gave us real community voice particularly around perceptions about reading, about literature about school, about education that it was really important for us to take heed of.

I think what's been really important is to strengthen relationships across the South Dunedin work.

We've looked for opportunities to really walk alongside organisations families, community groups to think about why these books are there and what do these books mean and some of the values that underpinned the project.

Pip Laufiso: One of the most important relationships that we have within
the working group and of course the partnership is one with mana whenua. This means that we've also got a really strong engagement I think.

Louise Waho: This is one of those projects that just made sense for us to get involved and support the bigger picture of how do we bring this to the front of tamariki who are going through some really vulnerable times and some difficult
challenges with their whānau to be able to actually love to read with their whānau.

Jan Swarbrick: The books that go first off the shelf are te reo. The children's reactions are just wonderful. At the end of the day to see their faces light up and they look and they say, can we, can we take this home? And I was like, yes you can.

Pete Chaplin: Having access to books and being able to read is just crucial for young people moving forward under their own steam. The discussions that we've had at staff meetings has sat really well with the programme that our teaching team
run in the classroom which is all about giving young people opportunities to read
stuff that spins their wheels.

The natural gravitation towards something that looks new and inviting is almost irresistible regardless of your level of reading ability.

They know the value of the resource and because it looked really presentable and engaging it was fantastic.

Crissi Blair: One of the things that we've been doing with the community of readers project is taking lots and lots of books into the schools. We had an event where we talked to the teachers about the joy of reading and about the
wide variety of things that were available to them.

Heather Howe: We've had books available for the children to take home,
we've got a shelf of books in the staff room for the staff to read. There was a focus on the teachers as readers as part of the Community of Readers for children to get inspired about readers they need to see teachers doing it.

Crissi Blair: For teachers to be able to see that they didn't have to be reading something that was just going to be good for the classroom but something that they would enjoy themselves has grown the enjoyment of reading again. Discovering things that they didn't really even know existed out in the world
of children's books.

Tien Ngahere: I'm quite honoured to have witnessed some students come a long way.

Pete Chaplin: The young people's response to the books was almost a wee bit
of disbelief that these beautiful engaging books were there for them to take.

Bridget Schaumann: We value books because books are taonga. That’s for a really good reason. They are transformational.

Barbara Cavanagh: You can't leave reading to chance in a school. So I think whatever opportunity there is, you pick it up. But as a leader,
you've got to lead it.

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