Meeting the needs of Māori in English-medium schools

This week I read a CORE Education blog post by Alex Hotere-Barnes called "Developing warrior-scholars, rethinking success".   It was mainly devised from an interview Alex did with Kia Aroha College Principal, Dr Ann Milne, of whom I have been a huge fan of for some time.  The blog struck a real chord with me, the concept of 'white spaces', holistic achievement and really just about how Kia Aroha are approaching teaching and learning from a cultural identity perspective.  I would strongly encourage you to read Alex's blogpost as it was hugely insightful and bang on in terms of radically re-thinking innovative educational change that meets the needs of our Māori learners.




  Tamara Bell: Te reo Māori in English medium schools from EDtalks on Vimeo.


I was reminded of this Ed Talks I filmed way back in 2012 when she discusses 'Whitestream' rather than English-medium schools and how the majority of our Māori and Pasifika kids are in these schools, not immersion, something I have always been acutely aware of and concerned with.  How are we meeting their needs?  How can we do better - this is a huge focus for our school again this year and we have just finished constructing our school wide goal, which is trying to build on the steps we took to work towards our 2015 school goal.  As you will see below, our focus is strongly targeting the needs of Māori - and you won't get any apologies or regret from us for that.



Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui e hoa mā - if you want to make a difference for your Māori learners and whānau, put them to the front, no excuses.

So what is an ILE - innovative learning environment?

The huge changes taking place in education throughout New Zealand are not just isolated to our country.  This shift or move to what the Ministry of Education initially called MLE's or modern learning environments but has now more accurately been coined ILE or innovative learning environment, has been rippling throughout schools around the world.  With all this change, comes a lot of confusion.  Many parents and even teachers are grappling with the new jargon/terms and even the purpose for the change to teaching practice and a new way of learning for our tamariki.

This video is a fantastic resource by some of our leading educators worldwide, that supports and explains what an innovative learning environment is, what changes you can expect and most importantly - why.

Take a moment to watch this and consider what they are saying.  I found what they were describing to be hugely inspiring and motivating and as a mother, this is exactly what I wish for my child's education.

It gives me great hope and excitement about our journey to create an innovative learning environment at our kura and about the kind of amazing tamariki that innovative learning systems will no doubt produce!

Whanaungatanga in action!

A new year has arrived.  The summer holidays flew by as they always do for us teachers and before we know it we are back at work.  This time last year was my first day at a new job, at a new school and I remember clearly how awkward the first teacher only day was for us newbies.  The school did things quite differently to what I was used to and because of this and it's sheer size and therefore number of staff and students, it took me quite a long time to settle in and feel like I belonged.  This is not an easy thing to navigate, especially being Māori and coming from a previous job where tikanga Māori took pride of place.  Not having mihimihi meant I did not know who everyone was, where they came from and if we were perhaps connected somehow.  Not having karakia tīmatanga, waiata or karakia whakamutunga before and after hui was also jarring as it felt like we went in cold and separated to hui instead of combined as one and when we finished everyone just went their separate ways.  This is not a criticism of my school, merely pointing out that at this time, these elements of tikanga Māori were not in place, which no doubt was one of the reasons I was hired, and if you have read my earlier posts you will know that many of these things are now highly valued and implemented daily at our school.  But in response to that feeling of isolation from the start of last year, I planned a very different teacher only day this year.

Firstly, I changed the name from teacher only days to staff retreat and the emphasis for our retreat would be whanaungatanga and effective planning for 2016.  I asked the Principal and BoT to support this initiative with some funding, which they kindly did and I promptly went about booking accommodation and a conference venue in Hanmer Springs for 2 days in Jan. An agenda was created early in Term 4 where all staff could add their ideas to and volunteer to take certain sessions or workshops over the 2 days.  Some of the things we worked through was all the day to day running of the school issues like duty, curriculum update and responsibilities, sport/music/cultural responsibilities, planning and appraisal etc.  But excitingly, we also covered some awesome new ideas like collaboratively creating a M.A.T.E's  document (mutually agreed team expectations) for the way we as staff will work together and practiced a process for mihi whakatau for when we welcome manuhiri, in line with Ngāi Tūāhuriri tikanga as mana whenua. We also spent time talking about PB4L (positive behaviour for learning), Teaching as Inquiry and all of our LwDT (learning with digital technologies) initiatives planned for this year.  I might be showing how much of a geek I am but it was awesome stuff! Highly engaging, productive, collaborative and relevant for all staff.

One of the best outcomes for our staff retreat though was the obvious effect it had on building a sense of whānau for us all.  Staff were sharing rooms together, car pooling up to and back from Hanmer, having a drink together, going for walks together, having dinner together, working in groups throughout the 2 day hui and all the time, building a strong sense of whanaungatanga.  We got to know the person behind the teacher - what they liked or disliked eating, how tired they were because of waking babies at home,  that they snore loudly or that they can play the guitar.  We even started our first day playing a game called "Whanaungatanga".

One person stands and starts talking about themselves - where they are from, family members, interests...anything they want.  When someone else can connect to what they are saying, for example if I said I have 3 children and someone sitting down also has 3 children, they stand and yell out "whanaungatanga"!  Then they take over and start talking about themselves until the next person can buzz in with a 'whanaungatanga".  This game was great to hear more about each other, to demonstrate that although we might all lead different lives, we all can connect to each other in some way too and it also was awesome to hear the improved te reo Māori pronunciation!  And do you know what really blew my mind and made my heart sing...when I walked around our school on the first day back for our kids, several of the classes I walked into were playing "whanaungatanga" - ka mau te wehi!

Flippin' professional development for teachers

Who else has sat in a staff meeting, exhausted from a busy day of teaching and found themselves totally tuning out to the so called PD, which usually looks like someone at the front of the staffroom talking to teachers, who are sitting 'listening'.

There is little opportunity for interaction, discussion or challenge and even IF the person at the front has some amazing gold to share, it is still extremely difficult to remain engaged in the learning when you are tired and thinking "I need to mark the kids writing from today, I need to email parents about camp, I need to talk to my team leader about a behaviour issue, I need to get home and pick my kids up, feed them, do homework, cook tea....." - who's with me? I know I'm not alone on this, as evidenced by all the hilarious staff meeting memes out there!

Now I need to raise my hands and plead guilty as in my time as a deputy principal and professional development facilitator, I have OFTEN found myself at the front of the room, staring out at people and wondering if they are hearing or caring about a word I say.  And I am sure we are thinking the exact same thing "There has to be a better way!"

This week I had the privilege of facilitating another Ako Panuku Hui ē, Tāiki ē! hui in Auckland, one of 3 hui I have facilitated this year.  The purpose of this hui was to firstly discuss and analyse the changes in education across Aotearoa and then introduce the following drivers of change - agency, connectedness, ubiquity and collaboration and how these provide opportunities to improve outcomes for tamariki by changing teaching and learning practices.  My co-facilitator Dee Reid and I wanted to model some of these practices throughout the PD hui and set up the two days so that we provided examples and ways of working that fostered these four kaupapa. We created an online Google Site and pre-populated the it with clips, links, resources, examples and questions around each of the 4 kaupapa.

Ako Panuku Hui on PhotoPeach

 On day 1 we began the hui with a open discussion about what is driving change in our own schools and how different people feel about the changes.  Then we introduced one of the key drivers of change at a time e.g. agency and directed all the teachers to the online content.  They had time to read, watch, research, play, learn and reflect and then we came together as a group to share what we had learned, what resonated with us, what challenged our thinking, what examples (if any) we saw of this in our school and what we would now commit to implementing in our classroom to provide opportunities for agency, ubiquity, collaboration and connectedness. As you can see from these pictures, all teachers on day 1 were engaged in the learning (for the entire day!).  They worked their way through the content at their own pace, they contributed their ideas and thoughts online through a shared google doc and face to face through our discussion time.  They had the ability to rewind and share the content with others.  They had time to explore and reflect and relate it to their own practice and most importantly, apply their new learning to their context, as this was the outcome for day 2.

Day 2 gave the teachers time to now create a resource that they could use in their own practice, back at their own school that directly linked to one of the four key drivers of change.  Each teacher had a several of hours to plan, design and create their resource and then had 20 minutes to share their mahi back to the whole group.  This was recorded and shared with everyone so we now had a kete of rauemi (a whole kit of resources) for everyone to access, if they wanted to.

When I asked the teachers how they felt about this style of professional development, they told me it was enjoyable as they could pick and choose things that interested them personally, it met their individual needs, it engaged them, they enjoyed having choice and the time to delve deep, they loved coming away with something practical they could use in the classroom and their professional learning was exponential. I won't lie - it felt really good to see this model was successful in terms of the learning outcomes we hoped to achieve and the engagement level of our participants.  Even better was the extremely small amount of time I stood at the front and talked to everyone aka poured the PD down their tuned out ears :)   This is just one small example of the way we could flip our traditional staff meetings to better engage staff and actually achieve some of the desired outcomes that we hope our PD will provide for our teachers.  If we as educators firmly support and believe that all of our children deserve an education that provides opportunities for student agency, ubiquitous learning, collaboration and connectedness then SURELY our teachers deserve that too?

Let's start a movement and phase out meeting for meetings sake, meetings that are all talk/no action, meetings where we all leave and think what did we achieve today or worse, what difference will that make for any of the kids in my class?   Perhaps we even need to start by phasing out the word meeting!  Let's move towards engaging, targeted professional development that meets the needs of staff, that let's them participate anywhere, anytime, online and face to face, where we connect and collaborate and even better, where we walk away with practical ideas, strategies and resources that we can use in our classrooms tomorrow that will support learning outcomes for our kids.

I know it sounds hard and I don't want to fall into the trap highlighted in the above meme of 'discussing things that must happen but never will' so I hunted this out on www.teachthought.com about "5 Challenges We Overcame Moving to a Flipped Staff Meeting", which could help get us started.  I am positive that with a little commitment and hard work it is achievable...who is with me?

My recommendations for colleagues considering transformation in education

EDEM682 - Transforming Education in Canterbury

The following review is a synthesis of key understandings and learning experiences that have emerged throughout the year that I would recommend to my colleagues considering transformation in education.

Exploring transformation and scoping educational change
Change can be difficult and stressful as it often stems from a ‘shifting context’, where the status quo is no longer the best way forward. For positive and sustainable change to occur, a ‘road map for leading change’ (Jansen, 2015) is important and must start with the why (Sinek, 2009). This not only supports leaders to understand the why but also to consider the key elements that will need to be explored while working through the change process, like the where, how, who and what. Once leaders have this roadmap in place, they can and should share it with all participants to ensure a shared understanding of the context for change and what elements will need to be explored when moving from the business as usual or ‘current state’, to the new business as usual or ‘future state’ (Jansen, 2015).
When scoping for change, the drivers for educational transformation should be identified. These are the things that are pushing or pulling your school towards the need to make changes. I would recommend that all key stakeholders have the opportunity to identify what external factors e.g. the global impact of technology or the identified new skills necessary for the jobs of tomorrow (OECD, 2012) and what internal factors, for example at my school, a whole school re­build due to earthquake damage, are influencing or already changing your educational context. Once these factors have been identified by all key stakeholders, you can then begin to see what potential risks/threats and what potential opportunities there are as a result of these drivers of change in action.

Visioning and systemic thinking in strategic planning
Strategic thinking must be systemic, in that we need to be able to see the big picture before we can understand the parts within it. To be able to make considerate and effective decisions around whole school change, understanding the whole comes before understanding the parts but the key element is actually in the interaction. If we do not consider the way in which decisions or change in one area can impact on another, we can be left with ‘unintended consequences’. An example of this could be where a school decides to change the hours of instruction, starting and finishing earlier in the day. This is based on good research that children will learn better in those hours but the unintended consequences could be huge e.g. increase of parents in need of after school childcare or out of sync timetables for siblings at different schools. I would recommend using key questions, relevant to your context, to create conversations and a shared understanding of the bigger picture, the parts within it and how the interact or influence each other. These questions could be used as a framework when working with staff, leaders, governance, whānau and students, “what does a successful school look like?” and “what are the factors that contribute to this and how do they influence each other?” Another reputable change model I would recommend schools research and apply to their own context by having staff collaboratively map out the change arena applied to their kura, would be Davis’ ‘Arena of Change’ (2008), a model that applies an ecological perspective to understand how teacher learning may be promoted for educational renewal, and clearly identifies that “teachers are the k​eystone species​in the education ecologies of the twenty-­first century world”.

Pedagogical shifts
Successful change to better meet the needs of modern learners in today's and tomorrow's schools will require some dramatic shifts to traditional methods and practice of teaching. ‘New pedagogies’ (Fullan & Langworthy, 2014) will present plenty of challenges but excitingly, lots of opportunities to better engage and prepare our students for a world that requires people with inquiry and problem solving skills, who can effectively collaborate, innovate, create and communicate and who are culturally responsive, digitally literate and globally aware. Derek Wenmoth (2013) from CORE Education talks about the drivers for change being agency, connectedness and ubiquity and these are driving some of the pedagogical changes that need to occur so that schools become an environment that values and fosters student agency, collaboration, co­-teaching, self regulated and personalised learning. I would recommend that when schools are considering pedagogical shifts, they need to begin with their students ­ what do they need to know, understand and do to be successful? Secondly ­ what does our learning practices and environments need to look like to accomplish this? Finally ­ how will we know what impact this is having on student engagement, enjoyment and achievement?

Community, whānau and iwi engagement
When considering transforming education in your school context, it is imperative that all members of your school community are included on this journey and can participate in the decision making process ­ h​e waka eke noa:​a canoe on which everyone can embark. One of the first steps needs to be identifying all key stakeholders ­ students, whānau, staff and Board of Trustees. As I identified earlier in the scoping process, it would also be recommendable to reach further abroad and look for other potential partners that could bring added value and richness to the transformation and future of the school through ‘civic engagement ­ t​he action through which citizens join in new conversations that have the capacity to alter the future’​, for example, libraries, community services­health, police, social services, local community businesses or other educational institutions e.g. Polytechnic or Universities.

Iwi engagement is also critical for all New Zealand educational settings. We know that traditionally we have not met the needs of many of our priority learners, specifically Māori and Pasifika tamariki and their whānau (MoE, 2013). Culturally responsive practices embedded into the culture of our schools will ensure that schools are upholding their obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) and are providing educational experiences that are authentic, meaningful and relevant for all learners, that build on their prior knowledge and cultural connections and acknowledges and celebrates diversity and the potential each child has within them to succeed. I would recommend that schools reach out to iwi and build a reciprocal and meaningful relationship with them. You will need their input and guidance around what culturally responsive practices should be normalised in your school setting and perhaps even establishing a ‘cultural narrative’ for your school, where schools can ensure design and practice will reflect the rich history of your local iwi and whenua. More importantly, schools need to address will be their tamariki, whānau and staff can support the iwi. A reciprocal relationship built on respect and ongoing support for each other will reap rewards for all and ensure the vision for Ka Hikitia (2013) of ‘Māori enjoying educational success as Māori’ becomes a reality in your kura.

References
Davis, N.E. (2008). How may teacher learning be promoted for educational renewal with IT? In J. Voogt & G. Knezek (eds.), I​nternational Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education, (​507­520) Amsterdam: Springer

Fullan, M., & Langworthy. (2014).​​A Rich Seam: How new pedagogies find deep learning. R​etrieved from http://www.michaelfullan.ca/wp­content/uploads/2014/01/3897.Rich_Seam_web.pdf

Jansen, C. (2015). Road map for change: presentation at lecture #1 of EDEM630 course. University of Canterbury.

Ministry of Education. (2013). K​a Hikitia­Accelerating Success 2013­2017.​Wellington, New Zealand:Learning Media.

OECD (2012). Education Today 2013: The OECD Perspective. Retrieved from
http://abdigm.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2013_12/20023619_educationtoday2013the oecdperspective.pdf

Sinek, S. (2009). Start with Why: H​ow great leaders inspire everyone to take action.​ New York: Portfolio.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi (1840)

Wenmoth, D., (2012) EdTalks; Ubiquity, agency and connectedness. Retreived from
http://edtalks.org/video/ubiquity­agency­and­connectedness 

Celebrate and communicate Māori success!

One thing I have learned throughout my years in education is open and regular communication with your Māori community is a must if you want to establish a positive and meaningful relationship with them.

I strongly encourage schools to take up this wero but many ask for examples of this in action - so here is one we are trying at the moment.

As part of our commitment to increased and improved communication with our Māori community, this year at Cobham Intermediate, we have created 'Pānui Ako', a term report sent out to all of our parents via the school newsletter and our Facebook page and emailed directly to all Māori whānau. We also send copies to all school whanaunga e.g. Burnside Primary, our MoE Senior Advisor, BoT, our local hapū-Ngāi Tūāhuriri, our cluster co-ordinator and other members of our wider school community.

Pānui Ako is designed and written by members of our whānau advisory group, which is made up of several staff, Māori students and some of their parents.

We hope you enjoy learning more about Cobham and our amazing tamariki -koia kei a rātou!

Chinese Language Week - celebrating our cultural diversity!

wǒ xuéxí pǔtōnghuà

I somehow got thrown in front of a camera to share a little bit about what Cobham Intermediate is doing to celebrate Chinese Language Week, but more importantly, to acknowledge and celebrate our Chinese students and families.  

Cultural responsiveness is one of our school focus areas for professional development and so far this year, this has been strongly aligned to working with our Māori and Pasifika communities, but with a 21% Asian student population at Cobham, how we welcome, support and celebrate the asian cultures and what they bring to Aotearoa is extremely important to me as an educator, to all of our students and of course to our wider school community.

I don't think I will be getting a call from Hollywood anytime soon though ;)