Kia Ora! Ko Emma Watts tōku ingoa.
I am the Shotover Primary School DATS Leader (Design, Arts, Technology & Science).
I believe that learning is our core business and that everyone is capable of learning. I am passionate about our community developing growth mindsets to cultivate curiosity, inspire passion and foster reflective thinking.
DATS is a fantastic way to grow future innovators and inventors. Through DATS we can foster children's creative problem solving and teamwork skills. It provides opportunities to learn by thinking with our hands, working with readily available materials, getting our hands ‘dirty’, and failing and bouncing back from that failure. It's a great opportunity for our children to practice climbing into and out of the ‘learning pit’, to foster ‘grit’ and develop a growth mindset within real-life and fun contexts. Embracing DATS within our school fosters future-focused learning.
I am passionate about developing our children’s confidence and ability to talk about their learning so that they can identify where they are at, where they are going and how they will get there, thus enabling our children to see themselves as the key drivers of their own learning. I find it incredibly rewarding to work alongside all akonga and to be part of their journey growing into confident, connected and actively involved life-long learners.
In my spare time I can be found outdoors tramping, exploring, snowboarding, kayaking or indoors reading, tinkering and creating.