Westlake Boys’ High School

Professional development thriving in the Centre for Excellence

Centre for Excellence staff Casey de Wit, Jude Arbuthnot and Kelly Easton.

The Westlake Boys Centre for Excellence is a dedicated space that provides our staff and students with evidencebased programmes and opportunities for excellence and equity in boys’ education.

Led by a team of three, the Centre for Excellence provides professional development programmes, mentoring opportunities, leadership and support for provisionally certified teachers.

This year the Centre for Excellence has introduced a Professional Development for Prefects programme. Casey De Wit says, “We were conscious that we put a lot of time and resources into professional development for our staff, but we also want to develop our students further.”

The programme includes regular sessions on what being a leader means, developing their leadership skills, and working with them on their goals as prefects. One of the development opportunities coming up for the prefects includes meeting with four Board of Trustees members to hear about what leadership looks like outside of a school context, and how they can apply some of the same principles in their role. Casey says, “We would like to help ensure they can leave Westlake at the end of the year with a sense of honour and pride in how they carried out their roles as prefects.”

‘Bite Size PD’ comprises 30–60-minute professional development sessions for staff, that sits alongside the comprehensive programme already offered for staff on Thursday mornings. Jude Arbuthnot says “Bite-Size PD is a chance for staff to present to their colleagues areas they are skilled at, giving participants practical strategies to walk away with and implement in their teaching practice straight away”.

Another successful programme running out of the Centre for Excellence is the ‘Great Teacher Toolkit’ – a professional development programme that starts with teachers gathering evidence on their teaching practice from students, and then using this information as a reflective tool to inform professional dialogue around where improvements in practice can be made. Kelly Easton notes that “a variety of areas can be focused-on, including lesson content, feedback, classroom management and relationships”. “Because the programme is student informed, it highlights areas of strength for teachers, so they know what to continue doing, and analyses areas that may need more development so they can use the Great Teacher Toolkit to strengthen those areas. The professional development circle is completed by gathering information from students again at the end of the programme, to measure improvements made.

We were conscious that we put a lot of time and resources into professional development for our staff, but we also want to develop our students further.

Westlake Founders 65th anniversary

On Tuesday 5th February 1957, 117 third formers gathered for the first full school assembly at the co-ed Westlake High School. Westlake High School existed for five years at the Westlake Girls' current site, before the school separated into single-sex schools and the boys moved up the hill to their current site on Forrest Hill Road. Each single-sex school began Former Westlake High School student Lesley Williams, wearing her school badge with pride. with just over 600 students, and 60 years later they each have over 2,000 students.

Last month, 50 foundation pupils gathered at The Bays Club to celebrate the 65th anniversary of Westlake High School. A lovely afternoon was spent reconnecting, Headmaster David Ferguson catching up with former students Reg Larsen and Bas Cuthbert. reminiscing, and reflecting on high school memories. Peter Burn, after whom the Westlake Boys Boardroom was named in 2021, spoke about how “life is made up of moments and memories, and Westlake really set me up for my life”. He also acknowledged current headmaster David Ferguson for the work he is doing in continuing the legacy and naming school buildings after long-serving staff at the school, honouring the depth of history at Westlake Boys.

Forrest Hill Primary School students taking part in a guided workshop with Dr Nick Brown and students from Westlake Boys and Girls.

Collaborative performance project

Nick Brown (Across School Leader from Westlake Boys for Te Kāhui Ako Pupuke, and HOD Drama) began an exciting, innovative project with two schools in our Community of Leaning, Te Kahui Ako o Pupuke. At Forrest Hill Primary and Wairau Intermediate, Nick – plus two students from Westlake Girls’ and one from Westlake Boys – met with two groups of 15 students. During the two hour-long workshops, students were guided through a mixture of play and discussion around the impacts of the last two years. The joys and challenges of living with Covid-19 were examined through a series of guided questions. During these workshops, the Westlake students collected student voice through verbatim testimony and personal narratives.

Nick will now take these student testimonies and shape them into a drama performance, which the Westlake students will perform back – to the primary and intermediate students – their own words (wordfor-word) that they themselves shared during the initial workshops. This work is called Performance Ethnography and is a popular field of research-based drama, where wellbeing and healing are facilitated through the active participation and sharing of voice from young people, such as our tamariki in our Community of Learning.

In Term 2, Nick will continue his work, as he visits other schools in Te Kahui Ako o Pupuke Community of Learning, gathering further testimonies, and extending and enriching the performance text. At the heart of this text (and performance) will be the voice and presence of our tamariki.