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Wilson School is a specialist setting working with young people aged from 5 to 21. It consists of a base school in Hauraki and satellite classes across the North Shore. The school supports 120 students with a diverse range of needs across their network. They follow the New Zealand Curriculum but adapt and personalise this to meet the needs of their students.
Making the move to Team Teach was a straightforward decision for Wilson School after working with an alternative behaviour support provider. Neil says, “I listened to what the team had to say and there was a really clear indication that they wanted to be using Team Teach.”
As Neil had personally used Team Teach across two other special schools before coming to Wilson, he fully supported the move. He explains, “The training focuses on understanding that all behaviour is communication and it supports staff to reflect on how students can be best supported and engaged within learning.”
Moving to Team Team has created consistency across the whole team, which was particularly important as Wilson School has a range of satellite classes.
Staff at Wilson School requested training to create consistency in behaviour support. They knew the Team Teach approach would support the school’s values of whanaungatanga (relationships and connections), rangitiratanga (self management), and kaitiakitanga (guardianship and respect).
Neil wanted to create in-house Team Teach trainers who could train both the existing team and also new members of staff as quickly as possible as a part of their induction process.
The team at Wilson School work across multiple sites, so to help provide timely access to support, they introduced QR codes across the network of classrooms in staff areas.
It’s now easy for any member of the team to scan the QR code to identify what support is needed for an individual child or whole class approach, request further support, or ask questions directly to the trainers.
Neil’s team consists of approximately 90 staff members, so it was important to consider how to embed the Team Teach approach consistently across the organisation. Neil explains, “We reached out to our staff and identified a potential team of people to be our in-school trainers, and we then worked with that team around implementation.”
This resulted in three members of staff being trained as in-house Team Teach trainers. Neil explains, “As we grow, we will then grow that team of trainers to continue to make sure that we’ve got that knowledge and expertise in school to provide support and guidance for us.”
The team at Wilson School found moving to Team Teach to be a straightforward process.
Neil says, “Implementing anything as a whole-school approach can often feel a little bit daunting. However, that wasn’t the case here. And I think that was because a number of the team really wanted to have Team Teach back in as a supportive measure.”
An important part of embedding the Team Teach approach was clarifying the role of the in-house trainers. Neil explains, “We’ve been really clear that our trainers don’t just deliver training, but they also work really closely to understand what’s happening across the school, provide targeted support and guidance as needed, and help us to work towards providing high-quality outcomes for our children.”
Wilson School has always embraced a holistic approach to learning with the support of professionals including teachers, therapists, specialists, and support staff. They have a large team and often have new members of staff joining them. This makes it vitally important to train new team members as quickly as possible.
They are currently investigating how they can be innovative by using different methods of delivery to ensure that Team Teach training is embedded into every aspect of school life across their organisation.
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