Claire Amos

For the last 20 years I have been an English teacher and have spent much time happily rolling around in the English Curriculum, unpicking the strands and unpacking the achievement objectives, all part and parcel of the the learning design process for any English course or module. This year I am, for the first time, taking on the role of Project Guide for Impact Projects, with a specific focus on Independent Innovation Projects. Whilst we do have a brilliant Projects Curriculum and a very clear framework for teaching and learning the projects process I did find myself wondering about the specifics of an Innovation Project. How can we teach students to be innovative? Can you even teach innovation? Or should it simply about providing the conditions and space for innovation? What if Innovation became a learning area? What might an Innovation Curriculum look like? Notes from the meet up On Saturday I was lucky enough to be part of a meet up which bought together innovators,...

Refining is what we do best! This week marked my fifth anniversary as Deputy Principal at Hobsonville Point Secondary School and more importantly the first year that we will operate as a fully fledged high school, offering programmes for Year 9-13. It has been an incredible journey, one that involved an incredible amount of work from an evolving team of committed educators who have not only reimagined secondary learning at HPSS but have influenced changing educational models around the country. It is heartening to see when we reflect on where we started with students in 2014, that much has remained the same. This was taken from the introduction to the school  which I wrote back in our first week of operation: HPSS is a co-educational state school located in Hobsonville Point, Auckland. We are a MLE (modern learning environment) which means we are a large open plan school, typified by open flexible learning spaces, break out rooms and specialised learning spaces. The furn...