Episode 6: Strategies for connecting and communicating with whānau

Forging partnerships with whānau can make a big difference to the outcomes for ākonga in your school. Today we’re talking about relationships with whānau, including the best ways to engage and connect with families and caregivers who are reluctant to get involved.

 

My guests this week 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:

• Partnering with whānau helps your ākonga to be successful at school, which is a common goal for you all. Showing you care is a great way to create trust.
• Remember that for some whānau, school may be a scary place where they themselves didn’t have good experiences – especially the principal’s office. Having people within your kura who can act as connectors (eg. attendance officers, other teachers) can work well, especially when you’re new to a school and haven’t had a chance to build your own relationships with families and caregivers.
• Some parents and caregivers may not be able to travel to school, so offering different ways to connect can work well, including for learning conversations – offer online options as well as in-person meetings.
• Sometimes something as simple as renaming an activity can turn it from something daunting into something fun, eg changing the name of ‘learning conferences’ to ‘learning celebrations’
• Kai can be a good way to get people in a room together. Thinking of creative ways to attract people to the kura is great eg. offering entry into a draw for kai vouchers for people who come along to learning conferences.
• Remember that whānau have a lot going on outside of school, so taking the time to get to know a family and how you can support them to support their tamariki is important.
• Don’t make assumption about why someone isn’t engaging with the school.
• Use lots of communication channels to connect with whānau and caregivers. Different channels work for different people – emails, text, social media, school apps and portals, face-to-face, phone calls.
• Keep your messaging consistent across all channels so there’s no chance of confusion.

 

Questions

1:11 [to Ngaire] how have you built your relationships with parents and caregivers?

3:37 [to all] How do you approach relationships with families that are more difficult to make time with?

11:08 [to all] Which communication channels have you found to be most effective?

16:27 [to all] What advice would you give to new tumuaki about engaging with whānau and community?

Episode Transcript

Eleisha (00:07):
Kia ora and welcome back to The Principals, a
podcast series for new schoolprincipals in Aotearoa New
Zealand. I'm Eleisha McNeill,thanks for joining me again.
Today we're going to continuetalking about connecting with
your school community, but we'refocusing on relationships with
whānau, including the best waysto engage and connect with
whānau who might not be so keento get involved with the school.

(00:29):
As always, you can find moreinformation in the e-learning
modules and there's a link tothem in the show notes. Again,
I'm joined by four fantastictumuaki- Ngaire Ashmore,
principal of Auckland Girls’Grammar School, John Prestidge,
tumuaki of Motueka High School,Ngahina Transom, tumuaki of
Frimley School in Hastings, andStephen Eames, principal of

(00:50):
Raroa School in Wellington.We'll crack right into it. Just
thinking about ākonga withinyour kura, partnerships with
whānau are obviously really,really essential and they can
make a big difference to theoutcomes for the kids in your
school. So Ngaire, how have youbuilt your relationships with
parents and caregivers? How haveyou gone about that?

Ngaire (01:11):
Well, first and foremost, I absolutely believe that all
students can be successful, canreach their potential, can blow
us away with their success. Andso I think parents want to know
that. Our whānau want to knowthat their children, our ākonga,
can be successful. We're a bigurban girls school, nearly 1200

(01:37):
students, and we've got 20%Maori and about 70% Pacifika.
You know, we've we've had goodachievement but not evenly
spread across all of ourstudents. And so really
connecting with our Maori andPasifika community, our whānau,

(01:57):
have been has been reallyimportant and absolutely the
ingredient to create the successthat we're managing to see now.
And it was about saying, okay,we believe that your child can
be successful, we can't do italone. We need to do it in

(02:18):
partnership with you, how do wework that out. And so we changed
the way we we met with whānau,we changed the way we had
learning conversations with them,we followed some primary school
models where they didn't meetsix or seven teachers in one
sitting in one night, we shutthe school for two days. We made

(02:39):
them really important, asimportant as going to your GP,
you know that's how importantyour, what you can do for your
children. And so we've finetuned what that looks like over
the years, but we have a reallygood model of communicating and
I think communication is really,really important. I do think

(03:02):
sometimes as students get olderand they're in secondary,
parents pull back a little bitbut I think they're the really
important years and so we'recontinuing to develop how we
connect and communicate andinvolve our community more in

(03:23):
the learning side of things. ButI can't move past the fact that
parents want their kids to besuccessful and so knowing that
if we work together that's goingto happen, then it will happen.
I absolutely believe that.

Eleisha (03:37):
Yeah. And you know, you've talked about being at the
school gate, so you get to knowthe whānau that are coming in,
coming in with the kids. What doyou do with the families where
you don't necessarily see - youknow, the parents are working,
they they can't be at school asoften. How do you approach
relationships with those thosefamilies that are more difficult

(03:59):
to kind of make time with?

Ngaire (04:02):
One of the things that has been the beauty of
post-covid or covid is thatonline hui, being able to
kōrero, you know, like we're inthe city, our whānau have to
travel great distances to getinto the city, you know, but
being able to have a call, havea meeting. I had one the other

(04:24):
day and there was mum to startwith and then dad got home from
work and then big sister came inand it was just like, we
couldn't have that if we did theold, you know, make an
appointment, come in and see us.And so, you know, tha has
reduced barriers, I think, tothose that might, might not have

(04:44):
been engaged. So, you know,that's that's working really
well for us here.

Eleisha (04:49):
Stephen.

Stephen (04:50):
I think just to add to that, I think it's, you know,
use the people in your learningcommunity or the wider community
to help you to get traction onthe relationship, because yeah
for some kids, for some families,school might be a scary place,
which they’ve never had arelationship for, you have to
try and break through that indifferent ways and you have to
be a bit of a strategist andhaving the right people to do it.

Eleisha (05:11):
Mm hmm. John.

John (05:14):
Yeah utilising the tools you've got and utilizing the
people you've got. And Icouldn't agree more with Stephen
that, that especially in myearly days at Motueka there were
clearly some people for whomcoming in to the principal's
office was a pretty loaded thingand whether it was for a good
thing or a conversation, theydidn't know me, but what they
did recognise was the role of aprincipal and what going to the

(05:36):
principal's office meant to them.So we have a number of really
strong connectors in ourcommunity, our attendance
officer is one of them. She hasbeen in the community for
decades and she is often our goto person to go oh, haven't seen
much of this student or thisparent, we really want to open a
bit of a dialogue about what wecan do to support them coming

(05:58):
back to school and what thattransition plan might look like.
She will often be the personthat pops in for a cup of tea
and goes, hey, you know, we’venoticed that you haven't been at
school, let's have a talk.Because again, as Ngaire said,
it's very, very quick and easyto say to a parent - and it's
really very true - we all wantthe same thing. We want your
student to be feeling successfuland to be achieving well at

(06:20):
school, and to be happy andsecure here. So as soon as you
get into that common ground - sowhat is the best way to make
that happen, what things can wedo together that are going to
get us to that place? Andsometimes though you do need a
broker, you do need somebody whocan manage those early stages of
the relationship until you havea chance to build that
relationship and trust yourself.Like Ngaire after a few

(06:42):
iterations we've gone to ahybrid model of parent-teacher
conferences where the studentsare always, always there, but
they can bring their parents in,if they can come in physically,
or like Ngaire you get a multiperson Zoom and Dad’s calling
in from his work and Mum’scalling in from her work and the
student’s sitting with theteacher and you manage it any

(07:08):
way you can to get thoseconversations to happen. There's
always a way though, sometimesisn't the most direct straight
route and more and more oftenit's not the traditional, yeah,
make a time, come and sit in thehall with 50,000 other people.
That's that's a dinosaur. That'spretty much gone I think.

Eleisha (07:25):
Yeah, Ngahina

Ngahina (07:27):
Yeah, I tautoko everything that everyone said
and it's never giving up andalways finding another way or
another strategy or anotherperson Kai always works for
every, any community. So kai inall different ways. Other ways
for our learning celebrations,renaming and rebranding the

(07:48):
interviewing like ahakoa hengawarehe [... although it is
easy, it is] simple it makes adifference so talking about the
learning learning celebration socelebrating that learning.
Closing school early one day,although sometimes it's a hōhā
for whanau, others appreciate itbecause you're never going to

(08:09):
please everybody, but justalways being innovative and
creative about creating thoseopportunities like Stephen’s
already said, being anopportunist and jumping on that
bandwagon. Kai vouchers, so Pakn Save vouchers work, and it’s
usually me at our pou that doesthe draw and it goes live on
Facebook and the whānau, theylove it for those whānau. And

(08:31):
they are our whā nau who arehard to engage but if it’s
something and they’ve got anopportunity to win a prize, and
they’re sitting there withtheir ticket or they know their
name’s in this draw they'relike, they're all over it. So
those are little things, butthey make a difference, so it's
that investment. But gettingthem in here into the kura is,

(08:55):
yeah you’re always thinkingabout how else can we do it,
what else can we do? And I’lladd to it the house calling, you
know, sometimes that's what Ihave to do, there’s our
frequent flyers that are on thatlist so that’s a house call
and when it's me calling, theyknow that it's a little bit
serious, it's a little bitelevated. But we’ve used all

(09:16):
the other methods, but it'sshowing that we don't give up.
It goes back to that caring, Icare, I care that’s why I’m
here. So and then just we’dall have it in our schools that
real wraparound because we all Ihear and feel from our kōrero
today that we're looking at theākonga or the tamaiti, the
taonga holistically. So we'rethinking about everything that

(09:41):
we can do to support them andtheir whānau to get here. So,
you know, we have a school nurse,she does that, she's part of the
pastoral. Our external agencies,so we bring them all together at
a table and we call that ourmanu hōia - it's a positive
flip, so that are whānauaren’t engaging with all them

(10:02):
different. We're bringing,collaborating and bringing that
together so that it's one personis the messenger and the
coordinator of that, learningsupport coordinators, you know,
all of that we use, maximise,maximise all those people that
we can to create a real teamteam effort, but it just comes
down to that care.

Ngaire (10:23):
And I think also, and I probably as a new principal did
too much of this, but judging.Like thinking I know why whanau
might not be engaging and then,you know, and then learning that
there was stuff that I didn'tknow and so, so trying to really

(10:44):
suspend any judgement so thatyou get all that information and
then how do you navigate throughwhat you know, so that you come
up with some really soundsolutions to the challenge of
engaging. And I think, you know,not giving up because, because
you care and because you wantthe absolute best.

Eleisha (11:07):
I'm finding this conversation quite inspirational.
It's like, you know, you guys,honestly, I don’t know how you
do the jobs you do. I thinkyou're incredible. And, you know,
the thought and the aroha thatgoes into everything that you do
is just it's quite extraordinary.And I don't know that there are
too many occupations where youwould find people quite so

(11:30):
passionate about their jobs astumuaki. You know, it's amazing.
Obviously, you know, teachers aswell are, yeah, just incredible.
Anyway, so got me a little bitemotional. You've all talked
about communication andcommunicating with your whānau
and with your school community,and there are so many different

(11:50):
ways that you can do it now.John, starting with you, which
ways have you found to be mostmost effective?

John (11:56):
Oh, that's the really interesting one because there is
no one way and and you have toaccept that pretty early on.
It's tempting to go, look,I’ve communicated with the
community, I've sent an emailout two weeks ago saying that
the school is going to be closedon next Thursday, and how come
parents are so surprised? Wellyou've got to very, very quickly

(12:18):
understand that you need to bediverse in how you're getting
information out. You have to bereally specific in what
information you're sending outand don't overload things. So so
we we still use whole familyemails, but we're very cautious
about what goes in there and wedon't overload. And mainly they
are reminders of - you can lookon the digital calendar that's

(12:42):
on our website and on our noticeboards. We put things through
Facebook as well. For reallycritical things like coming into
to the school to hear about yourstudent, then we expect teachers
to actually make phone calls toparents that we haven't heard
about. Every school will have aregister of parents I'm sure,
who we know don't get emails andwe know that they can't connect

(13:04):
via text, so we know that weactually have to be picking up
the phone to those guys. Andthen there's somebody who has a
relationship with them thatpicks up the phone to them. So
it's got to be really diverse.Don't neglect the power of
students as as key messengers ofyour school because they will
authentically and accuratelyreport what they are hearing at

(13:27):
school. So your messaging has tobe really you know from the
grassroots up, really consistent.And so what you say at assembly
um what you say when you walkinto kids at the front gate or
in the playground, that has tobe really consistent with what
you're saying to parents throughthe emails and through the
newsletters. We have anapp-based notice system, so our

(13:48):
students and parents get flaggedwith notices that come through
that system. And we do run astudent and parent portal. And
you need to just recognise thatthat everybody will come in
looking for information whenthey need it, they don't want a
whole lot of information twoweeks before they need it. It
needs to be quick and easy forthem to find.

Ngaire (14:07):
I think for us, one of the recent ways of communicating
is through social media, throughInstagram. And you know, when I
meet parents, I think, oh mygoodness, they're so young. You
know, they are young and and theway they communicate is
different to how I communicatedwhen I had had school-age
children. And so, you know,being able to connect, them

(14:31):
seeing the children on socialmedia, they love Texting,
texting, has also been a reallya really useful way. What I love
the most is the face-to-face, isthe in-person, is to be able to
go up and put your arm around aparent that you haven’t seen
for a while and say, you know,it's so good to see you and and

(14:54):
be able to talk directly to themabout about their child. You
know, that just fills my heart.

John (15:01):
So you're just reminding me of something, that we learned
a really valuable lesson throughCOVID. We have a very spread out
community - it all focuses in onMotueka but it's quite wide
spread out into the rural areas,so there are little pockets that
don't have great connectivity.So while we were trying to
deliver teaching via distance,we were getting quite worried as
a leadership team that therewere some students to some

(15:23):
families we were just nothearing from at all. And it was
there was a little bit of anepiphany moment when I reached
out to the student leaders andsaid, okay, you guys, look,
we're just a bit worried aboutyou as student leaders. We kind
of feel like we've left youhanging. We haven't really kind
of we haven't been having Zoommeetings. And they said, what do
you mean, we're very connected.We've got our own system, you
know, we're fine, in factwe’ll connect you to our

(15:45):
system, don’t worry about yoursystem, we’ll connect you to
ours! You And it was this richwhole other universe that they'd
built themselves so we startedleveraging that. Okay, we
haven't we haven't heard fromthis student, we know who their
friends are, see if they're incontact with them. And they were.
So there was a shadow networkthat we were not privy to, we

(16:06):
didn't have access to, and wedidn't know about, but the
students were connected. And soyou know can you check with them
they they got that stuff wedropped in their letterbox last
week, oh yeah, they've got it,they’re all okay, you know,
they’re trucking along prettyhappily. Oh fantastic, but they
weren't connecting with theemails and they weren't
connecting with text messages,but they were connecting in
other ways. So there are thereare multiple networks.

Eleisha (16:26):
Yeah. It's amazing how many different ways they
communicate, isn't it?
So if I gave you two sentenceseach to give your best advice to
new tumuaki about engaging withwhānau and community, what
would those two sentences be?John.

John (16:45):
My first sentence would be don't be afraid to show how much
you care. The reality is thatwhen when parents and students
know that you care about them,then they will forgive you for
the spelling mistakes in theemails. And they'll forgive you
for stuffing up something,because you care. Never forget
that you are also a learner, andit's really powerful when

(17:07):
students and parents see thatyou are a learner and that you
are also learning, particularlywhen you put those two together.
I care a lot and I'm learning.

Eleisha (17:15):
Awesome. Stephen?

Stephen (17:18):
I can think of one thing is that change lives by
changing mindsets. You know,like if we're looking at
individuals and many cases, youare changing parent mindsets,
well, student mindsets so thatthey can achieve And to do that,
you need to have strongrelationships so that they come
to school and they feel valued,and they also feel that the

(17:40):
school is a place where they cansucceed. And in some cases,
having that connection withwhānau, which may have not had
the best experiences at schools,they may not have been in the
right mindsets, but you need tochange that mindset.

Eleisha (17:51):
Ngaire

Ngaire (17:52):
Oh, I think that I would say that your community is one
of your greatest resources
and that when you connect andtap into that resource, then
your students are going to be somuch greater for it.

Eleisha (18:15):
Definitely, Ngahina.

Ngahina (18:18):
Yeah, ka pai. I'm going to bring mine, whanaungatanga is
based on
manaaki, doing it in a manaaki,mana-enhancing way. So our kupu
mana ake is about uplifting themana of somebody else. So always
being purposeful with yourintent of wanting to build this

(18:43):
relationship and thispartnership. Whatever your
message is you're conveying, howyou are doing that comes from a
place of manaaki.

Eleisha (18:55):
Hey what a way to end, that’s amazing. Thank you all
so much for your time, it’sbeen very inspiring and
enlightening, you’re allamazing people and I’m very
grateful to have spoken to you,thanks again.

John (19:09):
Thank you so much. Lovely to meet everyone

Ngaire (19:11):
Kia ora everyone, thank you. Lovely to meet you all.

Ngahina (19:14):
Nga re ra, kia kotou.

Eleisha (19:17):
Nga mihi nui everyone! Join me next time, when we’ll
talk about engaging with manawhenua. Ka kite ano.