Weaving Futures for Ridgway

During Term 3 the board and staff have used a design thinking approach to gather information from our community about what is important for us. Our aim was to strengthen our partnerships with parents and other community members so that we can better serve the needs of all of our children. We been guided in this by Carolyn Stuart from Weaving Futures who has many years experience in education having formerly been a principal and worked for Network for Learning (N4L).

The Weaving Futures design thinking model we are using has 4 phases, Delve, Design, Deploy, and Drive.

During this term we have used interviews and an online survey to 'delve'. The purpose of the interviews and survey was to help us develop empathy for individuals and groups to deeply understand the things that influence, connect, cause pains, and create gains for them (including staff, students, parents and the board). In undertaking this process we are expecting to uncover opportunities for improvements for Ridgway School that will benefit everyone and ensure that we can grow to be the best we can be.

We are incredibly grateful to you for taking the time to meet with us and for filling out the survey. We have heard directly from over 75% of our families - this is an outstanding response rate and gives us confidence that the information we have gathered is truly representative of our community. It has also provided us with a huge amount of data that is taking some time to work through and analyse. You can view some of the results of the survey; Device Questions, Culture & Values Questions, but please bear in mind that this work is not yet complete.

We've written 'stories' that describe what people want and why. Shown below are our stories for parents, teachers and the board. We still need to finish writing stories for our learners and support staff.

Please take some time to consider these parent stories. If you think we've missed something important to you please email me (principal@ridgway.school.nz) to explain what it is.

I'm sure you are not surprised that in some areas we have realised that we actually need to gather a little more information, specifically we've decided to do more finding out about any unconscious bias that might exist in our school and also to look more closely at our use of technology.

Once we have completed all of our stories the staff and board will be able to write a fresh vision and develop a strategic plan which reflects who we are and our aspirations that will guide our work over the next 3 - 5 years. The board plan to work on this next term and hope to have it ready for community comment by early in 2020.

Our user stories and the information gathered from the survey will be used by teachers to Uncover Opportunities, for which we will Identify and Validate Action Goals. These form the next phase of the Weaving Futures design thinking model that is to Design solutions that will help us become the best we can be.