When you focus on creativity, that’s what you get

Creativity can be found everywhere, most weeks, in all sorts of interesting places at Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School.

Most weeks you can walk around Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School, and you will see creativity present, alive, and thriving. Sometimes it’s exactly what you would expect in the form of the creative and performing arts. Sometimes it can be more subtle, less obvious, to the casual observer.

I saw a wonderful example of the latter when presented with a student’s business studies report, an outstanding piece of synthesis and creativity, showing a student operating well above his year level with some very complex thinking.

But it is often easier to ‘see’ the creativity in those creative arts. This morning it was kite and mask making in Mōhua. We’ll let the photos tell the story. 

When teachers are innovative and adventurous, when they are prepared to take ‘learning risks’ to support student learning, and students are engaged like this, creative excellence is sure to result.

The ways in which we are embedding creativity across the curriculum are also a result of our engagement with the Manaiakalani kaupapa, and our ‘Learn, Create, Share’ pedagogy. None of this is accidental. This happens as a reult of leadership across the whole kura, from teachers, from students, from everyone.

The power of creativity to support engagement, wellbeing, and academic achievement is now well documented. Our vision to be ‘he puna auaha, a centre of creative excellence’, is firmly fixed in our skies as our navigation point.