Melissa Chan-Green

Hi, and welcome to School Shorts with me, Melissa Chan-Green, journalist and mum of two with a passion for education.

In this episode, we are talking about the relationship between school and teachers and home, and in particular, the experience of one principal, Blair Drevitsky, to create what he calls a culture of communication.

It has been an important lesson, an important part of Blair's leadership as the leader of Lemonwood Grove School for the past six years, because this is in a suburb of Christchurch that has dealt not only with the Christchurch earthquakes, but they were the closest school to Linwood Mosque in the wake of the mosque attacks in New Zealand, which killed 51 people.

So his leadership there has delivered some sensitive and significant lessons around communication.

Blair, thank you so much for your time.

I know it is especially precious at the moment, so I really appreciate you being here.

As I said in the introduction, you have led schools through some pretty traumatic experiences and some really significant experiences, not only for New Zealand, but actually with a global lens.

People have been looking at Christchurch.

So as a school leader, how do you manage that?

How did you manage that?

We so often talk about with educators that the importance of a student feeling safe at school, that that's kind of the basis by which they can then learn.

And that's just really a sense of regulation about what's happening around them.

But I mean, these are really extreme circumstances.

And you're not only dealing with students who might be feeling unsafe and anxious, but

Parents, as you say, so they're potentially getting those kinds of anxieties at home.

Was there any lesson that you took from that into, okay, how do you keep kids safe?

Because this is a very extreme example of it.

How did you learn how to react to that?

I was just walking through school with my son the other day, he's just in year two, and I thought it's a school community that I thought, I'm going to be with these people probably for the next, I don't know, well, what would it be, 11 years of my life.

And then I've got my daughter coming through as well, so...