Easter Break Week 1: Conversation with Ed Strafford

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Today I had an awesome conversation with Ed Strafford, who works in the ministry of education.
Below are the questions, notes and key outcomes from this conversation.


(Questions are rough drafts that I ad-libed as we spoke.)
  1. Do you know if the MoE has made any recent changes to policy and/ or resources they provide for learning diversity in the classroom. (Specified teaching for different ways of thinking/ learning)
  2. Many of the teachers I’ve talked to have said they’d love a wider range of more detailed resources. With the recent NCEA review, is it likely the MoE will work on this in the next 10 months?
  3. For the context of a university project, is it relevant to be addressing similar problems that the MoE has already recognised in their review? Or does that just justify the importance of the problems? 
  4. At this stage I’m not sure whether I should direct my project towards a scalable public audience (potentially a resource that could work for the MoE), or a more specific individualised solution. Any advice?

Notes:


Key outcomes:
  • Contacts: follow up email for Tony Kairnes (teacher), potential office contacts in the MoE, contact with a group of schools interested in broader curriculum design.
  • Validating my decision to start with a small scale prototype in one school/ subject. (Startup mentality of MVP) Focus on human to human relationships, work on human needs + scale. (MoE can be a large monolith with different cadence/ drivers in all directions, can be hard to work with.)
  • Confirming MoE intention to work in a similar space, but no knowledge of anything concrete at this stage... beat them to it, then pitch a solution/ prototype example to MoE. Their process is to have an almost finished prototype project first, then you get approval, and then budget.
  • Validation to keep up with my ambition, keep on the govt direction track. Better to start big and work hard to get there, than start small and take the slower path. Hang onto the ministry, keep in touch to validate direction of project/ movement.
  • Advice: go where the energy is. If you make a contact that can support a wider scale project then go with that, otherwise think MVP.

Huge thanks to Ed!!!

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