19/5/17
Below are my notes from a P.D session I attended at Havelock North High School on May 19th 2017, about the Treaty of Waitangi and its place in the future of education. I was reassured to hear that much of what the speakers recommended is what is already starting to happen at HNI and in my own classroom. There were a few key things that really made me think… those were:
We need to adapt what we view ‘success’ as. Why does it have to only be about academics, why not empathy? Respect? Mana? (gifts that many Maori children are blessed with) Could this mean a different way of reporting to parents? How would this work around National standards? Are we really seeing the WHOLE student and celebrating all the other areas they are succeeding in?
Notes:
What’s the Treaty got to do with it?
Te Titiri o Waitangi - Future Focussed Education
How do the three articles of the Treaty look in our future focussed schools?
Biculturalism is a byproduct or outcome of the political relationship between Maori and the British crown.
What does our future look like?
- Estimated that up to 80% of the current workforce will be automated.
- Active seekers of knowledge - relevant, right now, just in time
- Skills based competencies, creativity, emotional intelligence, problem solvers
- Not passive consumers - beyond the 3R’s - don’t just come to school to be ‘filled up’
Article 1 - Honorable Governance
Te Tiriti formed with the future in mind - how do we tie what we alerady have here in NZ with the new future focussed skills - how does this look in education?
- Shared leadership models - some schools trying flattened models, distributed leadership
- Universal Design for Learning - how the kids are able to create their own path to their learning
- Communication that is totally transparent - anyone who is a stakeholder should be in the n
- Honorable Governance should mean that in any school we should see that you are in Aotearoa - two cultures being equitably represented in all areas of a school
Article 2 - Maori authority, Maori autonomy, Rangatiratanga
- Maori didn’t see themselves as a collective group ‘Maori’ until colonisation. Before that they only thought of themselves as Hapu - all very different
- You can be who you are
- Asserting their Rangatiratara (Mana) giving students agency, choice, options to choose their own way of learning, place to learn
- Passion projects - learning models where kids get to learn about themselves,follow their unique interests
- What is the stuff we can’t leave to chance (the explicit stuff) leave the rest to Passion
- Students having opportunities to be in a teaching role - this is ako, especially when the teacher is in a learner role
- Talking to whanau - what works for you? School go TO whanau, rather than always inviting them into school. Letting go of the control. Whanau may feel vulnerable/uncomfortable when visiting the school, similar to a Pakeha person visiting a marae
- How many decisions do we really make with our kids at school?
- Maori students achieving educational success as Maori - value placed on being Maori
Article 3 - Citizenship, equity, same rights as British
- Maori can still retain their ways of being
- Equitable access to everything, regardless of who you are
- Re-think what success looks like, redefine what we communicate to our whanau as success
- Does it always have to be about reading, writing and maths - what about all the other ways of being successful?
- Equitable representation of both cultures is not happening in staff
- Te reo Maori is for everyone - it is everyone’s responsibility to keep it alive
- Needs to be integrated - Te reo having Mana and status
- Maori giftedness - are these kids being celebrated? E.g. manaakitangata an ethos of care
- Equitable presences of Maori and non-Maori, books, language, signs
- Te reo - valued, seen, shared - no matter who you are
- ‘Everyday I walk in your world. Only when you walk in mine will we have achieved biculturalism’
Article 4 - The spoken promise (talked about)
- Protecting the spiritual beliefs and practices of Maori
