When my children were small, we decided not to have a television for many years.

Was it because we didn't like what was on TV and wanted to protect them? Not primarily.

The reason was that we considered the time that would be spent watching TV if we had it and our questions were:

1. "What might they be doing with this time that would be better than watching TV?"
2. "Will we be tempted to use TV as a babysitter/time filler in a way that woulld limit their development rather than help it?"

As technology has developed we now have multiple screens for children to watch. I face the same problems with my 15 year old as every mother. Julia spends quite a lot of time on screens communicating with her friends and watching movies.

I notice with concern the increased number of times I hear parents say
"It's ok I can talk because my (young) child is on the iPhone"
"Now while we are having coffee you guys can play on my phone".
"When we are traveling in the car, you can play on the device.'

My concerns are three-fold:
Firstly that we are raising a generation of children who frankly have boring lives at home. Because they are quiet and occupied and we as parents are tired, we forget that their world is small.

We forget that we should be opening their world to them. After school and weekends can be times of talking, going for a walk, listening to stories, having free dramatic play with friends, playing with lego, drawing pictures, baking cookies for granddad. We forget that if we don't do this the child's happy memories are scant, the child's world is small, the child's vocabulary is poor and therefore the child's ability to think and problem solve and create and innovate is significantly reduced.

And then it becomes the school's job to try to help children catch up on what they really need most from home. 

Secondly, we are raising a generation of children who are not well 'attached' to their parents. Their parents are distracted on their own devices and the child is not getting the concentrated care and attention that he needs.

There is a name for a condition these children develop over time:  Insecure Avoidant Attachment
What happens often is that children know they are loved to a degree, but when they really need their parent to help them he is busy on the cell phone and is ignored.  "Daddy I have lost my shoes, I need help...but I won’t ask Dad because he won’t help because I have tried too many times and been ignored too many times."

These children become increasingly anxious. They have looked for support in the past and not found it so they feel on their own and full of anxiety. The parent might think the child is independent and resilient, but in fact he is trying to manage the stress. These children looks easy to manage because they never ask, they hang around the edges, they wander around, they are pleasant but easily overlooked, are unmotivated, are capable but not achieving. When disappointed with a relationship they don’t invest, they begin to say ‘leave me alone’.

Thirdly, we are raising a generation with a fixation to their screens. Children who spend so much time on screens at home that, when given the opportunities that school provides for physical, social, and thinking experiences, they turn them down. Compulsivity like this also closes children's worlds down.

At school we have a wide variety of activities that broaden the children's world. 

When I was a mum of young children and life was busy I ended up with a long list of ideas of things I could do with the kids when I was tired and they were grumpy or needed to 'do something'. I will share the list with you in a coming blog post because it saved brain strain and helped me give the kids opportunities with minimum effort on my part. I also used to tell them that if they were bored it was because they were boring!! It is important for children to learn to take initiative and make the opportunities they have for varied kinds of play.

It is very hard to be a parent today. We are tired and stressed and distracted ourselves.

But this time passes sooo quickly and the memories and effects of our interaction with our children lingers long.

Let's resist the temptation to pass our kids the iPhone for distraction purposes and think:

"What might they be doing with this time that would be better than watching an iPad screen?"

Our Growing Community
We are pleased to have a growing roll, particularly in the junior area.  By the end of the year, we expect that our 5 year olds will form almost 1/3 of our total roll, so strong is the growth.

This means that we will have two teachers working collaboratively in Room 1 starting from next term. Mrs Allen will be the lead teacher, and Mrs Waddell will work closely with her and the children in literacy and numeracy four mornings per week so that the ratio of students to teachers remains around 1:10-15 for these more teacher-intense learning areas. Mrs Waddell trained in the UK and has worked in the school for several years, bringing huge expertise and experience while enjoying being in a teacher aide capacity as her own children are young. The teachers are excited about working together with these children.

Community of Learning
As many of you know, we are a part of the local and newly formed Mahurangi Community of Learning. This means that we have committed to work closely with the following schools: Mahurangi College, Snells Beach School, Warkworth Primary, Matakana Primary, Leigh School, Kaipara Flats School and Pakiri School.

The Ministry of Education has established well-funded opportunities for schools to work together collaboratively rather than competitively. The new initiative will preserve the uniqueness of each school while allowing us to learn from each other's strengths in order to raise achievement and build community across the district.  

We are pleased to be a part of this, and look forward to participating in a range of ways in the next few years.



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The more we learn about the brain and the role of emotion in our development and learning, the more we are challenged to reconsider the ways in which we teach, and parent.

What we know now is that, for young children, having strong attachments is really important. During a child’s first year he/she develops a specific emotional attachment to a primary attachment figure and that attachment figure is the secure base for the child - a haven of safety.  Usually, but not always, this is the mother. The presence of this attachment figure reassures the child and enables it to play, explore and learn new things. When the child is fearful in a new situation, or fears being abandoned, it experiences a strong instinctive drive to seek support from the caregiver, and once reassured and supported, these feelings vanish and the child resumes its play. Second attachment figures are often fathers or grandparents or aunts, and when there is consistent care from them and a growing number of people in their community, children can grow in confidence to explore their wider world.

As children grow, if they have a strong base relationship within their family, they have a fantastic head start.

Not all of us have had that safe haven in our homes in our early years, and through no fault of their own, children who have not had secure attachments in their early years  (eg parental absence, sickness or death, drug/alcohol, depression, abuse etc) can and often do exhibit behaviours designed to protect themselves and keep themselves safe.

Often these behaviours cause them and others all kinds of troubles. They might constantly try to seek attention of the parent or teacher, they may hit out at others, they may be unmotivated or fearful and reject opportunities to learn/fail. They may get very angry, or may run away when stressed. They may only know how to form superficial relationships. They may reject others before they themselves are rejected.

As a staff we are committed to being a part of the growing process for each child - being extra 'attachment figures' for the learners in our care. We want our school to be a safe haven, a place where children feel they belong, where they can be free to learn and grow. We want to help them replace the self-protective behaviours and barriers with new ways of relating.

It is both a challenge and a privilege to walk the early journey with our learners, a few of whom have learnt from a young age to either fight or flee or freeze when fearful. 

And it is cause for celebration when we see children blossom as part of our wider Christian school community.

This year we have begun comprehensive professional development on Positive Behavour for Learning which will help us evaluate all our behaviour management systems and processes, review the data we have on negative behaviours within the school, teach the specific behaviours we want to see schoolwide. 

Sam Burrows is leading this initiative with the staff and we look forward to sharing our learning with you during the next few terms.

Helen Pearson

A couple of weeks ago I wrote what I thought was an interesting post, which I thought I had published, and which I somehow managed to delete instead of publish! My apologies.  Here is Take 2.

I have often said in recent years that we are wanting and needing to prepare your children for their futures rather than our pasts. It is easy to replicate the kind of education we received as children, but it just won't equip this generation for their futures.

Our Teacher Only Days were absolutely terrific with top quality international speakers about how to prepare our children well.  

Our children will grow into :
a very culturally diverse world
-44% of the workforce currently in Auckland is born overseas
-there are over 200 ethnicities in Auckland alone
a very different job market than we currently know
-any job that can be routined is rapidly being offshored or automated
-what the world needs now is not so much what people know but what they do with what they know
a world in which the emerging careers will require creativity, curiosity and empathy

Therefore as teachers we need to be:
-avoiding the 'we've always done it that way' attitude and be prepared to think outside the box to set learners up for success
-building a culture of curiosity and collaboration
-encourage problem solving and risk-taking and a willingness to make mistakes in the process of learning

The experts tell us that these are the qualities that will help your children to be successful.

As a Christian, I am inspired by Jesus :
-his willingness to be 'outside the box' of people's expectations and to stretch others out of the boxes that kept their thinking small and self-focused
-his ability to engage people in learning wherever they were (physically, cognitively and spiritually)
-his example of embracing those who made mistakes and giving them hope for their futures - ironically it was those who 'had to be right' who missed Jesus' message and grace the most. Those who acknowledged their mistakes and were curious to learn and grow gained new revelation, and new joy in life.

​So may it be with us....and with our learners.

It is great to see the children playing such a wide variety of games at playtime and lunchtime and enjoying the summer. It occurred to me today that there were as many children on the field playing various games today as there were in the whole school a few years ago. Wonderful.

It is wonderful to have, for the first time, four fulltime permanent teaching staff.

Until now we have been only funded for 2.7 teachers plus me and the board in recent years has generously topped up our staffing to allow us to have three or four separate classes, (albeit with two classes having their usual teacher only Monday to Thursday lunchtime) last year to allow for growth.  this has meant that we have grown by 25% for each of the last two years.

Very small schools have advantages, but also lots of challenges, as those of you in small businesses will understand. Limited teaching staff have to do everything and more.

It is great this year to have 85 students enrolled, growing to possibly 100 or more during the year. 

Expect to see:
-more friends for your children to play with
-more opportunities - staff and others will be taking interest clubs so there will be new things for children to try like choir and craft and robotics and lego
-more sports - we have more children to make up teams for coaching and practices at lunchtime, and more parents and teachers to lead groups
-more organisation - as our new staff get embedded into the school, we have more people to share the jobs around. For those of you who are administratively-minded, you can expect to find our systems and communication clearer and more efficient

Thank you so much to those parents who help us with sports and help in the library and help in the office and leading lunchtime clubs and trips and visits. We value your help, and in many ways, the children have benefited by the amount of help we have received.

One need we have that seems difficult to meet is someone to coordinate a number of enthusiastic parent volunteers for social or fundraising activities. If you think you can jump in to help us fill the gaps we have in any area, please let us know.

Thanks again for being on the journey with us of growing our school! You are pioneers! It is a privilege to watch the growth, participate in this community, and enjoy the fruit of our combined labours!

​Helen Pearson

The cow had apparently only blinked at Sam Burrows that morning when he tried to shoo him away and needed Regan Townsend to give it the hard word! (OK, Sam, you can get me later ;)  )

There are many advantages to a small school: the family feel and community, the ease with which you can connect with your child's teachers and with your child's peers being important ones.

It is that sense of connection that we value highly at Horizon School, and want to see develop rather than diminish as we grow.

I firmly believe that knowing and being known as a person inside and outside of school, as a part of a rich and authentic community, provides children with a strong basis for a sense of identity and a growth in confidence. 

All good parents, like you, want their children to grow in confidence in social situations, to grow in connectedness, to be actively involved in the community as a contributor, and to want to learn and grow throughout their lives. 

At Horizon, this is also really important to us, and so we look forward to seeing all of you at the Parent Picnic and Parent Meeting on Thursday night.  

Please come! You may not realise how much it means to your child to know that you are connected in with his or her world of school. But I can assure you, your child is proud of you and wants his/her family to feel a part of the community along with everyone else. 

At the meeting you will have the opportunity to meet your child's friends and teacher, hear about the way the class will work this year, and learn more about camp (for Years 4-8). It will be a relaxed and fun night.

You will be sorely missed if you can't make it, but please give the office your apologies if this is the case.

Thanks

Helen Pearson
​Principal






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Last week I wrote about providing an opportunity for stillness so that we can grow in spirit - in awareness of God and ourselves.

This week, I want to tell you about what we are doing to stretch the thinking of our learners.

At the beginning of the year each teacher groups their class into "National Standards" groups for each learning area - Reading, Writing and Maths and identifies what their hunches about about what teaching actions might help shift each child further forward in their learning, eg from Below to At, At to Above, or Above to Well Above. Teachers then meet with me at the beginning of every term to discuss each child and what will be done to extend that child's learning during the next ten weeks. For a child to achieve Above National Standards they must be working a year above their age expectation and well above is two years above their age expectation. Obviously this is not possible for all children, and our focus is on progress for each child rather than competition against each other.

In recent years, our school has done very well at progressing learners who are Below National Standards to At National Standards, and in 2015-6 our challenge as a staff has been to maintain that push for our underachievers while raising the bar for those who are achieving at their age level to achieving Above and Well Above.

Staff have a number of ways of working with children to raise achievement, and we are regularly reflecting on what is working and not for each child.

We will have Parent-Teacher-Student (Three Way) Interviews on 7th September so that you will be able to discuss how you can help your child to make accelerated progress.

For Terms 1 and 2, Mrs Williams worked with whole classes to develop higher order thinking skills. This term, higher order thinking skills are being actively taught through all learning areas through our focus on Problem Solving and Mrs Williams is working with small groups of gifted and talented learners on Fridays.

Children in Room 1-2 have begun learning to do coding this term using a programme called Kodable. This is yet another way of problem solving that is extending their thinking skills.
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As a school we are working hard to raise achievement so that many of our learners can be achieving Above and Well Above National Standards in Reading, Writing and Maths, but also so that they become well-rounded thinkers who can process problems effectively in real life situations and in relationships.

Please make the Three Way Interview a priority on your calendar so that we can work together to create life-long learners who embrace problems with faith, hope and love.

Looking forward to seeing you.

​Helen Pearson

It is a wonderful thing, at Horizon School, to be able to acknowledge that we are more than brains, bodies and feelings. We are spiritual beings, designed to relate with God, with ourselves, and with each other. 

In order to give children time and space to develop an ability to 'be still and know that God is God', to pray and to reflect, we are setting up 'reflection stations' in the library again. The children will visit the library once every week or two, with their teacher, to spend time in quietness, doing a variety of calm activities, reading from the bible/a bible story book/a bible verse or just sitting, so that they can connect with God.

We hope that this opportunity will be meaningful for them, and that they make the most of opportunities in day-to-day life to turn their thoughts and hearts towards God.

We want our learners to become more and more 'fully alive'.  We know that with John Peacock's input we will be developing their physical muscles and abilities extra well through sport and PE. With our usual learning programme and through Lynn Williams' input, we are developing their neural pathways and their thinking skills. With the focus on the Footprints programme and through learning to resolve conflict, they will be learning to identify and handle their emotions better.

So, the focus on quiet reflection is one way we will be providing opportunities for them to develop spiritually, the final piece of the puzzle of a holistic education.  Philippians 4:13 says that we can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. 

Please encourage your child, with us, to ask for God's help with the concerns and issues they are facing.

Looking forward to a great term.

Helen Pearson

It is just over a month since we had ERO visiting us, and we received their draft report at the end of last week.
When it is finalised, we will share the report with you, but highlights include:

*Teachers focus on developing a love of learning in all students
*Teachers have good strategies in place to accelerate the progress of individual learners
*Teachers use flexible approaches to cater for students' different learning requirements
*The school responds effectively to Maori children whose learning and progress need acceleration
*Very good systems are in place to support those not achieving at the National Standard
*Reports to parents provide them with very good information about their child's learning and strategies to further support their progress and achievement
*Horizon School's strategic leadership, curriculum and other organisational processes and practices positively develop and enact the school's vision, values, goals and priorities for equity and excellence
*The school has consulted widely with parents
*Children benefit from teachers' innovative and flexible approaches to meet their needs and promote learning
*Children are offered increased opportunities to take responsibility, make choices and to express their views and preferences about what and how they want to learn
*The curriculum is responsive to students' interests
*The principal has managed and led change effectively over the past three years.
*Self review is comprehensive and well established
*The parent trustees and proprietor representatives work together well on the board. This enthusiastic and committed group use their complementary skills to help provide a caring and nurturing environment.

The only recommendations we had were:
*to continue to deepen student understanding and ownership of their learning 
*continue to deepen the analysis of student progress and acceleration over time

A parting comment made by one of the reviewers as she left was that this school felt different to many other schools she visited and that there was a strong sense of community. It was evident that she noticed the difference our special Christian character made.

Thanks for being a great community!

Helen Pearson

Here is a list of the top ten problems parents face with their preschoolers:
#1: Whining — How can that high-pitched little voice wield so much power?
#2: Not Listening — What we really mean is that she doesn't do what she is told to do.
#3: Meltdowns — Meltdown is easy to predict when whining and listening isn't working.
#4: Negotiation and Manipulation — When does negotiation stop and manipulation begin?
#5: Morning Hassles, Mealtime Mischief, Bedtime Blues — Daily life can sure wear us down.
#6: Sibling Fights — Think 'relationships and skills' instead of 'whodunit.'
#7: Clean-Up and Chores — Let's start at the beginning when we welcome baby . . .
#8: Bathroom Battles — Sparkling hands and teeth without battles.
#9: Hurting — Hitting, kicking, pinching, spitting, biting . . .
#10: Bad Language — Potty talk, swearing, name-calling . . .

And when we face these kinds of challenges, thinking about preparing children for school can seem overwhelming.

At our Parents of Preschoolers Open Day next Tuesday, Mary, our teacher of junior classes and I, at one stage a mum of five children under 8, will share some tips about some of the challenges above, and how to prepare your children for the school years.

Come along, and please invite your friends and neighbours. We want as many people as possible to come.

Thanks
Helen