Office
You are most welcome in the office at any time but please remember that before 9.00 a.m. especially, we are busy answering phones, answering parents and children’s queries, and greeting visitors. Please use the staffroom, and outside, as social places, not the office.
Please also remember when discussing privacy issues around the office and foyer area - it’s not only the walls that have ears! Choose another location for power surges to annoying children!
Photocopying
Photocopying requirements should be left for Roz to do in the morning when she arrives at 8.15 a.m. Some forward planning by you will ensure that this is done in time for your day’s lesson. Do not load the photocopier with paper or clear paper jams, (incorrect loading of paper usually causes the jams)! Please ensure you are in the room with the Photocopier when you are printing from your Laptop.
Money
Money bags and notebooks are to be sent to the office prior to 9.30 a.m. as the Office needs to get these jobs out of the way by 10.00 a.m. Remember these notebooks are of accounting importance.
Reimbursements
Procedures for ordering resources or claiming reimbursements are explained later in this site. If you have any queries about this, we will be happy to assist. Please make claims no older than one term. EFTPOS slips are not receipts. No receipts - no reimbursement.
Monica wants to process these Monthly
Stationery
Do not send children to the office during class time to buy stationery. This should be done with the money bag before 9.30 a.m.
Sickbay
Children who are unwell must be sent to the office first not the sick bay. Plasters will also be given out from the office. Malingerers will be sent back to class. Please do not send ‘Minders’ to be with children in the sick bay. Children cannot check themselves out of the sick bay. They must check with the office first. You may use the whiteboard on the wall to record child check in time and condition. Garth, Monica, Leigh & Donna are the main 1st Aiders.
Staffroom
This is an area we all own and share and wish to use so that we can relax and enjoy each other’s company. Let's ensure that our conversation helps this to happen and that we all contribute regularly to keeping the lounge area tidy and the kitchen area clean, hygienic with dishes washed and put away. Feel free to use things and shift furniture etc, but please put things back the way you found them.
We do not vent about children or other people in the staffroom
Phones
Please answer phones if you are able when the office is unattended. “Pt England School, _______ speaking”. Please do not use office phones to make your calls, although you may be given a cordless phone to use if making an approved toll call. Please make your other calls from staffroom or workrooms.
Cellphones
The government has mandated a "phones away for the day" policy for all NZ school children. Phones must be handed in to the teacher and returned to children at home time. Because of this policy, teachers need to be sensitive regarding their own use of cellphones and make sure they cannot be accused of inappropriate cellphone use, especially during class time, Assemblies or professional meetings.
Office Area
Please remember that this is someone else’s work space and not a place to sit down and make yourself at home. Remember not to have un-guarded conversations about children or other people in the office area
Supplies
Please ask for stationery etc, please don’t help yourself!
Communication
Please come into the office to speak to staff rather than communicating across the counter.
Computers
No Administration laptops including Office, Russell, Garth, Toni and Kent, will be loaned to or used by other staff.
Newsletters
When you send out a newsletter pertaining only to your team or sports group, please email a copy or share it with the office. We are happy to assist in the typing and photocopying of these but require some notice, not a last minute request!
Trips
All buses must be booked through the office. Office staff will confirm the booking and the price for you. Please give plenty of lead-in time for this to happen prior to your trip. Please ensure all trips conform to EOTC Policy and that the EOTC forms are approved a week prior to the trip.
Pigeon Holes
Please clear these at least weekly. These are a communication tool not just a storage area.
Meetings
Staff Meetings are on Mondays after school and staff need to be available until 5:00 p.m. Staff Meetings are a major vehicle for professional and curriculum delivery. They are to be viewed as compulsory.
Please ensure your cellphone is off and your laptop closed during meetings unless that item is required for what we are all working on.
Team meetings are held on afternoon nominated by the team. This is often a Tuesday. You are expected to attend and participate.
Special Needs Committee Meetings are attended by Management, Team Leaders and RTLB’s as well as representatives from associated agencies. These meetings are generally termly on a Thursday or Friday afternoon.
Team Leaders Meetings are held on Monday mornings @ 7:30 a.m. in the Staffroom.
SMT Meetings are on Tuesday @ 7:00 a.m.
Enablers Meetings are on Wednesday @ 7:30 a.m.
Dress
Staff dress is 'work casual'. It needs to differentiate us from learners and whanau, but in a way that does not create barriers. We don't wear beach/weekend/fitness wear to school. Jandals are not work casual, and if you can "see down it, up it or though it" its not teacher at school clothing. Note also; there's a difference between nice T-Shirts and sloppy T-Shirts, work shorts and knock around shorts!
Our pasifika cultures all expect a standard of modesty in teacher dress.
Teacher Absence
In the case of planned absence (professional development etc ) please give Kent warning as soon as you know about it. Give them a reminder again closer to the time if there is a considerable time lapse between 1st notification and the actual event. Planned absence needs to be approved by Russell. Always copy Monica into the leave request.
For planned absences, please use the Google Doc called Application For Leave
In the event of unplanned absence ( sickness etc ) please notify Kent (021421685) & your Team Leader either the evening before or between 6:00 and 6:45 a.m.
Digital Learning This is extensive and is all on another page HERE
Equipment
Borrowing Gear
Some ICT peripherals are stored in the Creative Space or managed through it. See Hannah or Russell about any peripherals you need to borrow. You must book gear in advance to guarantee availability. If you require gear as a last minute request, priority will always be given to those booked in. If children carry ICT peripherals for you it must always be in the appropriate carry bags. If you have a camera and associated gear in your own care then YOU are responsible for the equipment, including batteries and SD Cards. Please do NOT ask Hannah to supply these. Replacements are to be bought out of your class budget.
Laptops
All our staff members have a personal laptop paid for by the BOT. The conditions of use are covered in a separate document. It should be remembered that they are primarily provided for use at school, therefore should be at school every day. You are the only person who should be logged on under your name (Teacher). You are responsible for the security of your password. You are also expected to contribute to P.E.N.N, your class and individual blogs, your personal professional blog, and an up to date class site.
P.E.N.N:
This news service occurs 4 days a week from Monday to Thursday. It is a major means of communication within the school. Everyone is expected to watch it at either 10.45 am or 12.45 pm. It is expected that your team will have a consistent time slot to watch the news. However, classes that have a Creative/Maker Space lesson before lunch are asked to watch the news in the morning on that day.
All are welcome to contribute notices to PENN. Notices to the Creative Space by 8.00 a.m please. Items created by classes or teachers should be submitted the day before transmission and exported into the PENN folder on the network as a Quicktime .dv movie. Your classroom protocols for watching the news should be displayed next to your TV set.
Hannah will distribute a timetable at the beginning of each term for staff members’ contribution to PENN. Most staff with a BOT provided laptop are included in this timetable in 2021.
Music & Images
The music listened to and used for movies and dances etc, is expected to conform to standards excluding bad language, violence, sexism and racism. Review the lyrics of songs in doubt. Teach the children to do a google search for lyrics and email them to you. When legally ripping music, iTunes on a laptop and the Music folder on the network are the only two places to store digital music. (e.g. CD’s). Do not allow students to keep music files in their folders in Students Room. Our students should not be using the internet or our school network as a resource to for downloading song files unless the song is specific to genuine work needs at the time and has been approved by the teacher. Please do not allow children to bring music CD’s or USB Drives to school and rip them onto our school computers. Please ensure that images are teacher approved and that if they are digital photos, they should be stored in ‘Photos’ on the network as property of our school.
Remember that the copyright laws changed on 1 September 2011 and that content received via peer to peer networking or from "non-permission" download sites is absolutely illegal.
Garth operates the school iTunes account for music that needs to be bought. Please see him if you need music to be purchased for use at school.
Maintenance
The system for recording all ICT maintenance issues is from the school website. This includes your teacher laptop or classroom computers. You can access the FIX IT request form at the bottom of the home page. This will send a request to both Paulitia and Kent who will arrange to see and fix your machine. We expect teachers to be able to troubleshoot basic issues with their classroom computers and TELA laptops. Teachers are an Administrator for their class and TELA computers, so they can perform many tasks without needing to request Technical support. If you need any further help with troubleshooting ICT problems, please email Kent at ksomerville@ptengland.school.nz.
Network
All students’ work done on class computers, should be saved to the network in their personal folder in Students room.
All students' work done on chromebooks should be saved to the cloud. e.g. their personal school Google Account.
Staff have personal folders in Staffroom.
Room Service holds a number of shared resources including software. All photos taken at school, or of school students, must be stored in Photos (Photos 2024). This provides a digital record of the school year.
Staff email
Please use your professional address <jsmith@ptengland.school.nz> and check it daily.
Remember that emails sent from your professional email address and from your school laptop, need to be professional.
School Website
A large amount of school management and learning documentation is held in this repository, as is an increasing amount of professional information. Our website is viewed regularly by teachers from other places and is a very interactive environment. Staff are expected to use it and refer to it on a regular basis. The class pages will be referring visitors to your class blog which should be updated frequently.
Visitors
Pt England School has become a formal and informal professional development centre for teachers around NZ and overseas. We have a large number of visitor groups coming through the school. The most frequent request from visitor groups is to see Digital Learning in action, but the visits do cover a range of areas. In an attempt to limit the impact on classrooms, not all requests are granted and the visits are co-ordinated by Donna, Russell & Kent. On most occasions the visitors are taken on a tour of a the school and visit one or two classes from each team. Where possible we arrange to have our Student Ambassadors present to them too. We appreciate staff who are willing to have them come into their classes.
As part of being on the Pt England & Manaiakalani team it is expected that whenever possible and appropriate your class will be open to the wider education community.
While we are mostly providing a service for our colleagues, we do gain some other amazing benefits:
Our students greatly appreciate the interaction with an authentic audience and the feedback from strangers.
Our staff gain recognition from their peers for the wonderful job they are doing and even future job opportunities as a result!
Our school gets very high quality applicants for jobs.
Enabling team responsibilities
Support Staff & Special Needs
Role of Support Staff
It is the class teacher’s responsibility to ensure Support Staff have a viable programme to supervise and support.
Supervision & support means just that. It does not mean simply carrying out the activity with the child.
Support Staff extra curricular activities need to be carefully negotiated because they impinge on a number of other people, please discuss these arrangements with Toni.
Child Care & Management
School Management will endeavour to minimise disruption to classes and teachers and will do our best to support teachers to make their jobs better and easier.
Toni Nua has the over-all responsibility for this work, but the class teacher is always the front line when dealing with student pastoral care issues. Please have a crack 1st yourself, consult with your Team Leader and then either refer to Toni, Russell or Kent, or the Special Needs Committee.
Special Groups
Teachers must adhere to the special groups timetable for the release of their children except in unusual circumstances which will be negotiated in advance wherever possible. Children are not to be held back for disciplinary purposes unless school management think this is the best solution. If there are special events or unusual exceptions we would expect that Garth, Toni or Kent had prior notification.
Specialist Teachers will endeavour not to interrupt teachers in classrooms and will give good advance warning if their timetable cannot be met for some reason. We do not expect missed lessons to be made up as this places far too much pressure on specialist teachers.
Case Managers
Certain children will have Case Managers. We will detail this in the next couple of weeks. If an event occurs in the life of this child the Case Manager will co-ordinate the process, consequence or resulting intervention. Case Managers, AP’s or Principal may need to interrupt teachers occasionally. We apologise for this. Sometimes we will need to act swiftly and will need to inform you after the event.
Communication
Case Managers will endeavour to see that there is regular, effective communication with class teachers.
Please view your pigeon hole as a communication method, not just a place to store lunch. It is your responsibility to empty it regularly.
We will endeavour to ensure that we do not have unnecessary interruption from the school intercom.
Referrals
Where there is consistent concern about social/pastoral/behavioural issues, children should be referred to the Team Leader and then to Toni. These needs will continue to be referred to the Special Needs Committee as appropriate, and learning needs will continue to be referred to the Special Needs Committee.
Phones
Cellphones
Children’s cellphones must be declared to the teacher so they can collected in daily. We no longer need a parent permission signature for this. Children must not use these without permission and they will be kept in an agreed place during the hours of instruction. The pxt, Video & Audio recording functions are absolutely not to be used at school by students unless they are part of the programme of learning. Staff are to have their phones switched off during the hours of instruction and during meetings.
School phones
Children must be supervised when using phones except for office approved monitors. Please do not expect calls during hours of instruction, as unless there is an emergency, these will not be put through to you. Please do not invite your friends to call your extension number. We will be monitoring these calls from the key phone.
Assessment Data Bases
We are using the Hero Database for student management. Please ensure that your register is marked prior to 9.30 each day. The Office will make the necessary amendments if a child arrives after that time or if they receive a message. Running Record Data, ESOL & PAT and STAR Data along with OTJs are all now in HERO. Please ensure these are updated at the appropriate time.
We are using PAT for Y4 - Y8 Reading & Maths, e-asTTle for Writing
Duty
Interim Roster
We need to ensure a good coverage of playground supervision and other activities. Please get to your duty time promptly as you affect other teachers as well as the children if you are late. Garth & Sally will be preparing a duty roster for each term.
We want all our staff to consider themselves ‘School-Teachers’ not just class teachers. One of the outcomes of this is that all of us are on duty if we see a problem that is close to us or that we can quickly resolve.
Greeting Time
We would like all class teachers in their rooms by 8:30, to greet children and parents, to provide security for children and to start the day well.
We would like children to have entry to their classrooms by 8:30 a.m. or earlier if the teacher desires, as long as they are supervised.
School Wide Responsibilities
We are always looking for Sports Coaches and there are a variety of other ways staff can contribute to the life of the school. Please feel free to volunteer! The Production Team and the Social Group invite any new members who might like to join.
Personal possessions that go missing
In the event that children's or adults belongings go missing, thought stolen, this must be reported to the SMT on the day it happens. We are quite successful at retrieving stuff, when we get onto it the same day. Please take all thefts seriously and report them quickly.