Empowering agency, innovation and leadership.
Empowering
At Russell Street we aim to empower our students so they are prepared for anything. Our goal is to provide the best conditions for empowering our learners by being attentive to and tapping into their interests, inspiring possibilities and allowing our learners to create their own pathways. We want them to have their own voice and direction and the focus and discipline to make things happen. This involves a commitment to personalising learning for our learners.
Agency
Learner agency is a central driver at Russell Street as we firmly believe that learners (both children and adults) who are actively engaged and self-capable, will have their learning accelerated and be better prepared for the world they face. We see the characteristics of agency include learners having a growth mindset, being collaborative and outward focused, asking questions and thinking creatively, setting goals, knowing themselves as learners and having hunger for learning.
More formally, we define learner agency as follows.
Agentic learners act with intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflection. They approach learning with a growth mindset in which they show ownership and autonomy by driving decisions about their learning, environment, connections and hauora (Bandura, 2006; Dweck, 2012).
Innovation
At Russell Street we strive to create a culture of innovation where we want our learners to take creative risks and to question what we do and why we do it.
For us innovation is a way of thinking, where learners consider ideas, actions and possible solutions and outcomes to solve problems, create new approaches or simply by asking themselves, “there’s got to be another way”.
Innovation is not a thing, a task or a technology but the practical application of new and better ideas that come about after looking at something from a different perspective and thinking differently.
Leadership
At Russell Street School we aim to provide all learners with the opportunity to experience and develop their leadership capacity. We view leadership as a broad concept that involves demonstrating leadership within and across a range of contexts. We recognise that what it looks like for each individual is different. It includes being inclusive and valuing diversity, being empathic, an effective communicator, recognising strengths in others and knowing when to lead and when to delegate. It includes personal growth as an individual learner strives to build their own personal pathway and lead their own learning and become an active member of our school and beyond.