• Transcript

  Anne Meade: I'm Anne Meade and I'm one of the co-founders, with my daughter, we established Daisies 10 years ago. And I'm still actively involved in Daisies, not as a teacher, but in the education leadership team.

  Lucy Hayes: I'm Lucy Hayes and I am an education leader and kaiako at Daisies.

  That's a good segue into what learning matters here too. We unpack different parts of the curriculum and learning outcomes as a team. And from there we find what's kind of on top for us or what's really important for our community at the moment.

  Anne Meade: Yes, so we've thought about what matters here. Just to put in that I was actually linked with a small piece of work that had a video attached to it. Called 5 out of 5 for leadership in early childhood education a few years ago. We landed on that phrase, what matters here, because Te Whāriki is designed as a framework. And you're allowed to work out what matters to your community, your community of kaiako, your community, your whānau community. We know what matters for Daisies now after six to seven years of going into the bush and climbing the local mountain Tarikākā. That is very important. So we've got a whole lot of different ways of looking at Te Whāriki in relation to the curriculum that we run in relation to our nature explore programme. Compared with the way that we use the curriculum for the children being within the Daisies building.

  Lucy Hayes: You were just saying then about how we know what's important to us. And I think for kaiako and other services that might be an area that kind of people go, "ohhhh", or worry about. Different centres should look different. What happens and what's important in those centres – it should look different. We shouldn't be the same and that’s the joy of Te Whāriki is that what's important to an individual service and a group of people can be just that. You know what's important for us is not necessarily important for the centre two blocks away.

  Anne Meade: We find out, we have quite a few sessions each year with parents. For a number of those times where we join up with parents we actually ask their aspirations. And we put in front of the parents a template that's got the framework of Te Whāriki and that is the basis of the one-on-one conversation. It evolves and I think by saying those meetings are there it means that what matters to the parents actually shifts a bit. Compared with three years ago it's different now. We've got changing demographics within our community around the northern suburbs. And we need to pay attention to that and work and accommodate to the parents’ aspirations and we do.

  Lucy Hayes: And it's that strong relationship that we have with all stakeholders, you know what I mean, with families and with children, and within our teaching team. It's the strong relationships that we invest in that allow us to use the curriculum.

  Anne Meade: And I think it helps us listen better too. The relationships are there and I think we work at that – being good listeners, that we listen to them.

This video is part of:

• Deciding what matter here
• Matika maranga webinar 1: Designing local curriculum.