Kia ora koutou

As you may, or may not, be aware, the school is currently going through some big changes. We are in a new campus shared with Avonside GHS; we are in a new community; we have a new Board of Trustees and, before too long, we will also have a new Headmaster. We are also reaching the end of our current School Charter. This is significant as it will set the course for the future of Shirley BHS.

As a school, we felt that this was an opportune time to re-define our values, so that they more closely reflect the values of our community and the diverse people which make it up.

We have used an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach for this and have consulted with staff, students and the wider community.

AI has four distinct phases:

• Discover what is already great about the culture of our school (so that we do not lose our essence)
• Dream about what the best Shirley Boys’ might be like, and which values we should hold
• Design ways to bring the values to life within the school
• Deploy them.

We have completed the Discover and Dream phases and are now seeking feedback from the wider community so we can be sure that the work we have done so far does indeed reflect the values of our community.

This is where we would like your input.

The data has been sorted into six main themes based upon a shared “feel”, and the words which are similar have been put into “word-clouds”.

There are four questions which we would like you to answer about each theme so that we can then further distil each into a distinct value. The questions are:

1. Are the words grouped correctly? Do some words belong in other groups?

2. Does the descriptor match the word cloud? Can you come up with a better one?

3. What is one word that brings each cloud together? Can you describe this in one word?

4. Is there something missing? Would you like to add any other values?

This link will send you to an online google survey. We would really appreciate you taking the time to fill this in: https://forms.gle/SHznoMYKmCGo6BeL6

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me:

Kind regards

John Laurenson