Looking back at MIT 2023

This year I was very fortunate to be a part of the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers 2023. I was one of five other teachers from around New Zealand to take part in this project this year. 

We began our journey in Omaha, getting to know each other and starting with a Design Thinking Process to help us make a start and to work out what we might want to work on for the duration of the year.  We achieved so much in these couple of days and we felt excited and ready to get started on our projects.  Each term we met in Auckland at KPMG to share our progress and work through any issues we were having with our fellow MIT colleages. 

At the beginning of the Term 3 holidays we headed to the Bay of Islands to present our projects to the Bay of Islands Summit attendees.  Then a few weeks after that we were on stage again, this time presenting at the Principals' Wānanga.

My project was focused on oral language and my tool is called Talk the Talk and includes lots of ideas for oral language activities that can be used in the classroom. 

Click on the speech bubbles to look back at my journey and to also see my Talk the Talk tool.

Bay of Islands Summit 2023

The summit, where we would present our projects, had seemed almost like a surreal, something in the very distance, event.  Then all of a sudden it was the end of Term 3 and we were all travelling to the Bay of Islands to be part of the Bay of Islands Summit and present our projects to the world...well at least to the summit attendees! 

We were lucky enough to travel to the Bay of Islands on the Saturday and stay in Paihia, which was very central to everywhere that we needed to be.  We did a bit of sightseeing as well as helping with some administrative jobs for the summit.  We also had a run through of our Pecha Kucha presentations.  A Pecha Kucha is a presentation where your slides automatically change every 20 seconds so you have to be pretty direct with what you are sharing, no waffling!

We were also able to attend some of the workshops while at the summit.  I attended Creating Animations in Photopea with Hannah and Kelsey, Getting Creative with Mathematics and Statistics with Donna, DFI Reboot : Media with Vicki, He pepeha matihiko with Makaore and He aha Mahimaina?/What is Minecraft? with Vivian.  The pepeha workshop with Makaore really stuck with me and I am going to use what he shared with us at the beginning of next year.  Another way for students to represent themselves, their pepeha and places important to them.

On the Monday afternoon you could choose a visit or activity of some sort and I selected the visit to Waitangi.  Wow!!  It was such a valuable experience and I feel very lucky to have been able to do this.

Day 2 of the summit was the day for our presentations.  We were all pretty nervous but excited that the day had finally arrived where we could put our public speaking to the test.  Matt had ensured we were very well prepared and rehearsed.  It was something that was outside my comfort zone but I do feel pretty proud of myself for having achieved it.  There were such lovely attendees at the summit and we received such a lot of positive feedback, so that made it so worthwhile.  You can view my presentation here if you are interested.

Thank you to the Manaiakalani Network for the experience that comes with being an Innovative Teacher.  It has been such an amazing journey and I have loved it.  Next stop the Principals' Wānanga in Auckland where we do it all over again!