Episode 5: Building relationships with whānau and community

Being a tumuaki is all about relationships, and good relationships with whānau, the school community and the wider community are essential. Today, we’re talking about ways to connect, build and maintain relationships with your school and wider community.

 

My guests are:

• Ngaire Ashmore, tumuaki of Auckland Girls’ Grammar School
• John Prestidge, principal of Motueka High School
• Ngahina Transom, tumuaki of Frimley School in Hastings
• Stephen Eames, principal of Raroa Normal Intermediate School in Wellington.

 

This podcast was produced for the Ministry of Education as part of Te Ara Tīmatanga mō ngā Tumuaki - The Beginning Pathway for Principals.

 

You can learn more about this topic by accessing Te Ara Tīmatanga mō ngā Tumuaki - The Beginning Pathway for Principals e-learning modules on the Education LMS: https://training.education.govt.nz

 

Show notes

Episode themes:

• Importance of being yourself, of being authentic whenever you’re engaging with your community so you can build a genuine connection. Let whānau know you care about their tamariki by sharing your values, passion and hopes for their kids with them.
• Importance of taking the time to get to know students, staff and families/caregivers when you first start, remembering that the first impression a family will get of you will come from their kids.
• Learning who your key stakeholders are and taking the time to get to know them, even if you get sick of drinking cups of tea and coffee.
• If you’re building a relationship with iwi, understand that this is an important relationship and that it takes time. And if you’re looking for contacts in that iwi, look in your own kura - your whānau are iwi, your whānau are your voice, your whānau are your activators of your school and your community [note: building relationships with mana whenua will be covered in a future episode].
• Role model and live the values of your kura – they’re not just words on a website – to help bring your community along.
• Good relationships with your community can bring those values to life, creating a shared vision and trust and belief that what you’re doing is going to be good. It helps enable transformation to continue and evolve.
• Deficit theorising – you can always find problems, but with community buy-in you can solve them too.
• Look for opportunities to connect to help you learn who the key parties are in your community. You don’t need to figure it all out right away – you can form relationships by asking questions about to talk to about what.

 

Questions

• 5:05 [to Ngaire] How important are relationships with whānau, school community and the wider community when you're tumuaki?
• 8:01 [to John] When you first started in the tumuaki role in a new kura, what steps did you take to build those relationships with the families in your school, and with the community?
• 11:26 [to Ngahina] How do you approach relationship-building?
• 14:09 [to Ngahina] What can good relationships with your community enable for your kura?
• 16:35 [to all] How do you establish who key stakeholders are when you first start in a school?