Leading a learning community

Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Osr0Lm19qM

Leaders and school librarians at Ohaeawai School, Viscount School Hurupaki School, Matarau School and Ormiston Senior High School discuss the importance of whole school collaboration.

Transcript

Lee Whitelaw: The culture of our school is to develop personalised learning for every child, not only reading but finding out what they're interested in.

So that to me is why I'm so passionate about the library being the focal point of
the school, so it's not just about books it's about the whole curriculum.

Liz Christiansen: This wonderful library environment and me being staffed in the library is thanks to the vision of our principal she's always been supportive of the library
she's been steadily building this library up and placing a lot of value in it and that pays dividends, our reading ages in the school are phenomenal.

Lee Whitelaw: To me it's all about the connections and that's the children, her, the staff, the community, community businesses.

Barbara Woods: Here reading and information-seeking is a very collaborative and sharing
activity, we want kids to know it's a place where you can talk and discuss and be really happy.

Margaret Holmes: I think the success of our library as something that promotes reading culture is having somebody to drive it, there's got to be a leader.

Rachael Robertson: We've had a whole school approach in building this culture, so we've had everybody involved, our teacher in charge of the library, our librarian, all of the teaching staff, the principal and the children obviously, so we've all
got on board.

Lee Whitelaw: We have tremendous support from our Board of Trustees. If I go to a board meeting and can present something, things happen quickly at our school.

Liz Christiansen: The school has invested in this library all the way through made it a priority. It's not just having the library, it's using it.

Lee Whitelaw: Liz our librarian works as a teacher aide in the morning so she has that close contact and sees what happens in classrooms especially with reading and writing so there's a real connection with what's happening in the classroom to what she brings back to
the library.

This year we've had the Reading Together Programme at our school, so we targeted 15 parents from throughout the school and they came for a four week Reading Together Programme.

Liz Christiansen: It has made a huge difference to the children having the parents involved and it's made a huge difference to the parents knowing how to approach books and what books
to choose.

Lee Whitelaw: Because we took a cross-section of parents from a range of families, a range of year levels we're hoping that they will spread the word and go out more into the community and we're going to run another one at least once a year.

Diana Prentice: Our Librarian Rose is central to our library, we couldn't exist without the way she runs the library. First of all she's relationship focused she is highly responsive to

A) the staff's needs and B) the students' needs.

Rose Nisbet: The leadership at this school they have a vision and they live that vision themselves and then they say to us live it with us. It's about how do we best prepare these students for the future and they challenge our practice.

And its two-way thing - we're allowed to challenge their practice as well.

Diana Prentice: She works with staff very closely in that she attends our staff meetings she attends our professional learning each week she knows what we're all doing in terms of curriculum and she's always looking for new ways to access information for us as staff, but also for students.

Lee Whitelaw: We have great relationships with our children and our staff so it goes back to connection of having those clear, not only learning connections, but social connections as well.

Liz Christiansen: Her leadership has been critical, she values it enough to... I have 15 to 20 hours a week in the library, it's a little bit flexible because I work within the resource room as well, but I am here for every class that comes.

Lee Whitelaw: It is a priority for our school.