One of the key benefits of being present at the Manaiakalani Wānanga held in Auckland each year, is the opportunity to network and collaborate kanohi ki te kanohi or face to face.   With over 100 participants in attendance, it’s the ideal place to share practice, brainstorm ideas and discover what’s on top for our teachers.   Inspired by the presentations and conversations with like-minded colleagues, it’s the perfect environment for hatching a plan, so over a few canapes and refreshments it became a recurring theme that there was strong interest for a professional development event specifically geared towards our secondary school teachers.

Our secondary colleagues were keen to spend some time together over a day to discuss issues that spoke directly to NCEA, how to enhance teacher practice, and the unique challenges of the high school classroom.   There was a surge of interest in learning more about  AI tools like Gemini, Canvas and NotebookLM.

Google HQ hosted us and it was a fabulous day.  Special thanks to Steve Smith, the NZ Education Manager and our Manaiakalani Facilitation team, who supported our teachers to move beyond theory and into the practical world of AI. Together, we built curated agents grounded in our Learn, Create, Share pedagogy, specifically aligned to the New Zealand Curriculum and NCEA standards.

As I looked around the room at Google HQ, I didn’t just see teachers learning about ‘tools’—I saw them reclaiming time, collaborating with peers, and rediscovering creative ways to support their students. For an inaugural summit, the energy was exactly what we’d hoped for: a collective of educators inspired by new possibilities for teaching and learning. We set out to create a space for secondary teachers to connect, and this was the perfect start to this journey

Check out our photos and feedback from the day on our Secondary Support site.