Week 28
As a young person growing up in a small town I have been immersed in Māori culture and tikanga from an early age. Māori language was spoken to me without the expectation that I would reply. I was part of the extended whanau of my neighbours without having any blood ties and as a child, I thought nothing exceptional about this. It is these early experiences that I believe that have shaped me in my thinking and responsiveness to Māori culture. I chose to begin my teaching career in a kura with total immersion classes except for one junior and senior mainstream class of which I was teaching in the junior one. From there I moved to a decile one predominantly Māori school with a rumaki unit. These early teaching experiences showed me the importance of building relationships based on mutual trust not only with the students I was teaching but also the whanau. My cultural responsiveness throughout my teaching is based on tikanga that I was taught as a child and what I have since learnt is acceptable practice within Te Arawa.
Russell Bishop talks about six elements that agentic teachers do daily and the importance of education being “relationship centred education” (Bishop 2012) he also states “relationships being paramount to educational performance” (Bishop, 2012). I strive to base my practice around these relationships and within my educational setting we are all working toward Māori students achieving educational success as Māori (Ministry of Education, 2011).
In our setting, we are developing stronger relationships with our Māori community in many ways. The first being strengthening the communication and consultation with our Māori community. We began by identifying at risk learners and then engaged their parents in a group called te rōpū hurihanga. This was made up of our principal and three other staff members along with Māori leaders in our community. This group generated discussions around the wants and needs of our Māori community and how as a school we could support their tamariki. This group has become more self managing and is driven by the community it then feeds back to the school. Members of this group have taken the initiative to engage our wider community about the education of their students. We are also working on developing a strong tie for our school with a community marae that is right on our doorstep. We have used this marae to facilitate professional learning and our school has been welcomed on to the marae and now we are able to access this for learning and engaging our community. As a school, we are still developing how to best use this to support our students. Mason Duri (2016) talks about Whanau and education being the keys to Māori potential. It is our challenge going forward how we work with whanau to maximize this.
An area that we are exploring further in our new entrants is the place of play based education and how this can support the needs of maori achieving educational success as Māori (Ministry of Education, 2011). Mason Duri talks about the “potential for maori students never being greater than it is now” (Duri, 2016) as their is a higher uptake in early childhood education. This is an area we are developing as we can see how engaged our students are in learning within the early childhood setting and how can we then maximise this potential moving into the primary setting. We want to develop greater skills in collaborative learning and 21st century skills to support Māori to achieve the goals, principles and pathways (Duri, 2016) as outlined in outcomes from the 2001 hui Taumata. We are currently at various stages of engaging in professional learning, research, visiting different educational settings to see what may work for our learners and community and most importantly engaging our community in what they want for their learners.
Bishop, R. Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994
Duri, M (2016) Realising Māori potential, RTLB professional learning seminar - Maximising Educational Outcomes for Maori; 15 March 2016; Tauranga, New Zealand
Ministry of Education (2011) Tātaiako - Cultural Competencies For Teachers of Māori Learners. New Zealand. Ministry of Education.
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