Te Puke teachers on science leadership programme sabbatical

Teachers Kirsty Buchanan, left, and Fleur Rosie-Boyle are on a sabbatical and working at Plant and Food Research.

Two local teachers are planting seeds from which better learning will grow.

Te Puke High School science teacher Kirsty Buchanan and Fleur Rosie-Boyle from Ōtamarākau School are taking time out from the classroom to be part of the 18-month Science Teacher Leadership Programme (STLP).

For the first phase of the programme they are working at Plant and Food Research on No 1 Rd.

Kirsty says she is really appreciating the opportunity to reconnect with real life science and scientists in local horticulture.

''I've been out in the orchard doing a fruit drop count and into the lab to look at some testing for some experimental research they are doing in there,'' she says.

Fleur says the teachers have been ''getting their hands dirty''.

''I've been helping a number of different scientists with their projects and looking at the different processes.''

One thing she has realised is that it's okay to make mistakes.

''It's about how is that going to change your thinking and what are you going to do? I think that's really important for children to learn, that resilience.''

Kirsty says lessons in a science context can also be used in other areas of life.

''I think that [resilience] is something a lot of our kids are lacking.''

''Other things come in too like safety and how important that is,'' says Fleur. ''We are learning a lot.

''It's been good for me to get out of my comfort zone and do stuff that, really, I was scared I was going to get wrong, so imagine how children feel?''

Kirsty says it has been good to see some of the areas she teaches in school being applied in the real world.

Networking is an important part of the placement, and developing connections could lead to school visits to the research facility.

STLP includes a number of professional development workshops and a live-in leadership course at Otago University as part of phase one.

''There is lots of professional development all about the nature of science because the nature of science isn't taught well in schools,'' says Fleur.

The return to school in July starts phase two, giving them a chance to apply what they have learned in a school context.

Fleur says once back at school she will be upskilling other teachers as well as working on a range of projects with pupils.

''I'm looking forward to doing work at the marae in Ōtamarākau, things like replanting the native trees and regrowth of the area, and to the children being part of that and seeing it through.

''I want to do an animal farm at school and we have some very skilled people in our community ... so it's about bringing those people into school and using the local resources we have in Te Puke and celebrating the local environment. We need to really get our children to invest in that and I think science is a really good way to do that.''

Kirsty says she is still feeling her way on the programme.

''That's the really nice thing about taking these six months to get my head into it and really work out what's going to work for our school.

''We've got a lot of freedom in terms of the emphasis of where we take our curriculum.''

She says she would like to have more focus on Mātauranga Māori [the Māori way of engaging with the world] and link that with the curriculum.

''I want to bring in those sorts of links and also develop relationships with our local industry to make those contacts in our classroom but also be able to link into people in the real world and that real life context.''

She says her goal is not to make every one of her students into scientists.

''But what I do want them to be is citizen scientists so they can pick up misinformation and they can critique what's given to them.''

The STLP is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, run through the ministry's Curious Minds initiative, and administered by the Royal Society Te Aparangi.