Manaaki Stars Program
How can we become better at something?
We practice, repeat - mindfully, review, analyse, and evaluate. Then we try again.
How do we become better at people skills?
The purpose of Manaaki Stars is to provide opportunities to practice the important skills in the Growth Profile. The growth profile aims to sum up the qualities our community believes that graduates of MHC should have proficiency in to be well-rounded young adults.
Some examples are
- Resilience
- Empathy
- Communication
- Team player
- Creativity
- Thinking critically
These are not the kinds of skills that a person can just do a six week unit of study on and then claim to have mastered it.
The aspects of the growth profile go towards developing our characters, and personal qualities, that will set us up for positive lives. So Manaaki Stars is a learning programme that deliberately and consciously activates opportunities for you to practice, develop and perform those qualities.
There are three levels of success criteria - Years 7&8; 9&10, and seniors - and a way to track your progress. You can contribute evidence towards your growth profile from both your subject lessons and from your manaaki stars lessons. When your kaiāwhina agrees that you have shown sufficient evidence towards any of the five parts of STARS, we are developing a system of badges to recognise your achievement.
One of the most pleasing parts of recognising your progress towards the Growth Profile is that not everyone can be in the top 10% of academic achievement, but absolutely everyone can achieve the criteria towards at least one of the STARS if you make the effort to collect the evidence.
Working together with your whānau and your teachers, we want to celebrate the strengths of your personalities - maybe you are good at making others feel welcome and encouraged; you listen to their stories and take interest in their activities; you can put people at their ease and value their contributions. These are the skills of being inclusive which is one of the aspects of the Relational part of the STARS. Maybe being inclusive is something others among you need to work on.
So to review: the Manaaki Stars programme is about giving life to our Growth Profile, which describes the qualities of a well-prepared-for-life graduate of MHC.
It’s about growth, challenging yourself to work on the less comfortable sides of your personality
And it’s about people; becoming good people.
He aha te mea nui?
He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.
What is the most important thing? It is people, it is people, it is people.
Carolyn Fordyce
Deputy Principal