My role for MIT doesn’t have an official title (at least that I know of), something along the lines of coach or mentor is probably pretty close, but I usually just call myself the cheerleader! My role is to help Dorothy Burt lead it, and to support and manage the teachers on the programme each year. I’ve been able to do this role alongside Dorothy for 3 years now, and it’s something that I look forward to every year and feel more confident doing each year also. I love working with passionate and creative teachers, and the MIT programme always delivers just that.
Today though we had our final wrap up session of the programme for 2022, and I find it always feels a little sad. Not too dissimilar to saying goodbye to a class at the end of year haha. Sad to say goodbye to each other, but while celebrating all the hard work and achievements throughout the year - which there were many to celebrate!
This year covid still tried it’s best to ruin our hui’s with it’s new Omicron season, but we managed MIT 2022 without having to cancel any of our face-to-face content at all this year. Sadly as expected, some of the group were still absent at some of the events thanks to covid, but for the most part it was fantastic to be back to business as usual after a couple of very interrupted years.
We started the year with our Design Sprint Hui in the beautiful Coromandel. Where our teachers wrestled with their problem over 2 days, before starting to brainstorm and ideate possible solutions. I’m always so impressed at how quickly amazing and innovative ideas start to take shape in this format. It’s something about being away from school, away from home, and being together in a fully immersed problem solving space. It’s magical really.
KPMG hosted us again this year in their beautiful offices in the viaduct. We spend 4 magical face-to-face sessions here throughout the year. Again these sessions are truly priceless. It’s so rare for most of our MIT teachers to have a day to totally focus on one aspect of the job. Even release days don't even compare, it is simply just not the same. There is always that element of being on call when you're on site at school. Always being interrupted, or just watching out the window to make sure that Student-A doesn’t get too wound up by Student-B and you have to go out there to intervene. For these reasons having this time and space away from school to focus on their project 4 x a year, and to be able to discuss their projects with professional like minded people is just so valuable.
Not to mention it's also nice to dress up a bit corporate for the day, and get treated to a catered lunch! Thank you KPMG!
We made it to the Cook Islands again this year!
Now I have already blogged about the Cook Island Teacher Summit, but our MIT teachers absolutely killed it! They captivated the whole audience, and were one of the few who spoke in the main room to the whole crowd (quite a daunting task). They also had a full room in their follow up workshop session the next day.
Then only a few weeks later the team presented again at the Manaiakalani Principals Wānaga, and again stole the show! You can see their presentation videos on their blogs at the links below.
I highly recommend checking out the teachers projects, and please share them further if you find one that you know someone else would find useful. The team would love to hear from you to, so if you get the chance to leave a comment please do.
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