Anna Cawkwell

My favourite part of my job are strong relationships with students and staff all across the school, and the ability to offer support and foster the desire to achieve personal excellence.

Strong relationships with my students and their whānau have always been an integral part of my personal teaching philosophy. I believe that forming individual, meaningful and understanding relationships is important, because it makes each individual feel valued, provides the opportunity to give positive feedback and strengthens the adult-child relationship.

As a Dean, I have the opportunity to make a difference for our students, reaching further than my classroom, and the role of the Specialist Classroom Teacher will allow be to work more closely with my colleagues to support them in reaching their professional development goals.

Respect is my core value and I believe that I use open-mindedness and trust to role model it. Respect for myself, others and my environment has always been a very important value to me and I build my relationships with others around these values. To me, being respectful means that I have a desire to get to know my students and colleagues, I show an interest in their backgrounds and care for their needs.

I enjoy working with students in a mentoring role, more recently mentoring priority learners at HGHS and conversations with students in my tutor class, and before my time at HGHS as a Project K mentor and Kahunui house tutor. Training for these roles has given me valuable skills in mentoring situations, in particular to goal setting and restorative approaches to conflict resolution.

I have personally enjoyed the coaching PD at HGHS and see great potential in using the coaching tools, in particular the listening skills when working with my colleagues as a Specialist Classroom Teacher.

Raising my beautiful family with my supportive husband in my dream home, while having a the opportunity to work in a fulling profession which allows me to grow as a person each day.