Nicola
Tempero

Qualifications

Reading Recovery Certificate – Christchurch College of Education
Diploma of Teaching – Dunedin College of Education

Professional experience

Nicki works for Tātai Aho Rau Core Education alongside educators to provide advice and support in schools/kura to reimagine possibilities in teaching and learning. Nicki supports educators to develop and extend their practices in innovative ways. She provides responsive support to the needs and culture of the school to enable teachers and leaders to make strategic decisions.

Nicki has particular strengths in elearning, technology implementation, creating innovative learning environments, implementing modern learning pedagogies and developing collaborative teaching practices. She is passionate about keeping learners at the centre of thinking, and supporting teachers to develop learner agency and to use learner voice to increase engagement and achievement.

Nicki is a highly experienced classroom teacher and leader – she has taught all primary year levels. She has been an information and communications technology coordinator, inquiry lead teacher and curriculum lead teacher.

Expertise

Nicki has expertise in the following areas:

Digital fluency

Successfully supporting schools and learning communities to:

• creatively use technologies to develop collaboration, personalisation, community and learner engagement.
• increase student achievement and engagement through the use of digital tools
• self-review their elearning practices and capabilities to identify and target areas for improvement
• develop strategic plans to embed the use of digital technologies across the curriculum
• develop the processes and capabilities required to provide opportunities for all learners to become digitally literate and fluent
• use best practice elearning strategies to enable accessible, relevant and high quality blended learning
• develop strategic plans to embed the use of digital technologies across the curriculum.

Curriculum design

Successfully supporting learning communities to:

• review their local curriculum to ensure it meets the needs of their students
• design a local curriculum with a focus on place based, authentic learning opportunities.
• co-create their localised curriculum that is more reflective of a school’s needs and aspirations
• develop coherent pathways of learning across the learning community
• develop their Universal Design for Learning capabilities to design more inclusive programs so that all students experience success
• implement authentic and meaningful learning opportunities related to the revised Digital Technology content within the Technology Curriculum
• investigate STEAM/STEM programmes of learning
• explore literacy development in both primary and secondary contexts.

Future-focused education

Successfully supporting schools and learning communities to:

• evaluate, refine and innovate current practices using teaching as inquiry models as evidence-based support
• involve learners in the creation of personalised learning pathways
• plan, implement and manage change
• develop practices that include future-focused pedagogies, effectively use modern learning environments and reflect biculturalism and agreed vision and values.
• integrate digital technologies to support effective pedagogy in the classroom.

Collaboration

Successfully supporting school and learning communities to:

• develop a shared vision for teaching and learning, involving whānau, communities and learners
• transform teaching and learning through the development of collaborative teaching practices
• develop effective systems to support collaboration
• unpack what authentic collaboration looks like in their context.

Evaluative capability

Successfully supporting schools and learning communities to:

• identify target students from analysis of achievement data
• collect and analyse qualitative and quantitative data about students from multiple sources
• help schools develop an evidence seeking mindset to inform change and develop priorities.

Design and management of programmes for teacher professional learning

Successfully supports learning communities to:

• redesign professional learning models to build teacher capacity and engagement
• support staff through change.

Conference presentations, keynotes, seminars, workshops

2020 NPDL Design process (Digital Technologies)
2020 uLearn presenter
2018–2020 Kia Takatu ā Matihiko team lead
2019 uLearn presenter
2018 uLearn presenter
2017 uLearn presenter
2016 uLearn – Coding and Robotics for Juniors, Digital Tools for Knowing your Learner
2015 uLearn – Help I don’t know how to Code, Coding for Juniors
2015 Google Summit – Gathering Student Voice through Google Forms

Personal statement

I am a passionate and innovative educator. I enjoy working collaboratively co-designing learning with teachers and students to create the best possible experiences and a love of learning.

I believe that great relationships with students, their family, and whānau are the key to helping students to realise their potential and become leaders. It is important for learners to follow their passions, make connections, collaborate and develop a sense of curiosity. Developing opportunities through digital literacy opens up the world enabling learners to have agency over what, when and how they learn, ensuring the development of skills for their futures.

Learning is all about fun, challenges, resilience, inclusion, relationships and realising potential.