People are strange when you're a stranger (The Doors)

Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash

Last week the senior school teachers travelled to Palmerston North to meet the students from Hawera, Wellington, Hastings, and PN campuses.

Some random thoughts:

There's nothing like human contact. Interestingly, I heard staff remarking on things like how tall or how short some students (and staff) were. Connections are important. Humans come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Sometimes we forget when that human is just a square on a screen. We can empathise much more if we have that valuable human contact.

Many staff came prepared with games or activities for students to interact with while they were meeting them. Great idea I thought. Takes the awkwardness away from the situation, and adds a fun element.

Sunny PN weather really helped create a good vibe. The PN event was also the third of three so it was able to learn from the previous two.

Size matters - the PN Learning Centre area is massive and well suited to having 400 people visit. Having and inside, outside option really helped.

I was busy - collecting students, talking with staff, doing errands (servant leadership), aiming to do a report of MAP Growth trends off and on, and having restorative chats with some of my students when called upon.

The day went quickly!