Whoa-ora and Sheesh-kanga

First off, an apology to my colleagues. A conversation taking place around me yesterday left me feeling concerned about a few people I care about. The emotional toll left me a bit empty for staff only day today, which impacted my filter, my ability to receive from those teaching, and my ability to engage with people on anything beyond the surface. I eventually took myself off to a quiet corner to refresh and restore somewhat. I am aware that my lack of freeboard will impact the telling of this story, however, I am also aware that our students come into our classes with their own lack of freeboard. For that reason, I hope this will help us all. Help me to process and be back to normal, and help us to remember to look beyond the surface when a student is disengaged.

So, whoa-ora and sheesh-kanga. What do I mean by that. Firstly, it is not meant as derogatory slurs against te Reo Māori. It's to express my feeling of overwhelm at concepts that feel so foreign to me. I thought I was pretty good at ticking the criteria 3 and 10 boxes in the previous Registered Teacher Criteria (they're the ones that were to do with Māori learners and Māori learning). Seems that's actually exactly all I was doing. How was I being inclusive? Chuck a couple of NZ short stories in the year somewhere and yup - I've included Māori learners in my curriculum. If they had actual te Reo words in them - great. 3 and 10 done. Tick tick.

So when I started teaching Kaupapa Māori as a critical lens to teach literature through this term, I actually had no concept of the magnitude of the task we are undertaking. I am so grateful that my students expect their teachers to be learners, because right now we are all wrestling together.

Here's a website that clearly outlines Kaupapa Māori.  Whaea said "ka rewe", so I'm going to use this as our base.
Here's a Mansfield text. How well is it fitting Kaupapa Māori? Not great - she's Pākeha (Kaupapa Māori includes "by Māori, for Māori, about Māori in its definition). Nonetheless, we explored the Pākeha construct of Māori in this text, as breaking down the Pākeha-born identity is one thing Kaupapa Māori seeks to do (Kayla.net)
Here's an Ihimaera one. Same event as Mansfield, but a Māori author's response. How are the two stories the same? Different? Where's Waari in this story? What's Kaupapa Māori about this story?
Let's watch Waru - Whaea said this was Kaupapa Māori. But how is this Kaupapa Māori when Whaea also said that The Pā Boys isn't Māori?
Let's watch The Pā Boys and see if we can work it out.
We are wrestling. It's hard. The students are doing better at it than I am, that's for sure. I'm joining in with all the learning activities, including myself in the groupings, because I'm learning right along with these year 13 students. Once we've finished watching The Pā Boys, we'll go back to critical texts again and try and work this out together. I gave the students their Assessment documents at the beginning of the unit, and told them to hand them into me on or before the first day of next term, so they know what ways they're evidencing their learning this term. Which means right now we can focus on this challenge of deconstructing texts to work out what Kaupapa Māori actually means.

And yet despite all this - or perhaps because of it - when I went to the workshop on matauranga Māori and the one on tikanga, I still felt very overwhelmed. I did a full year paper on Matauranga Maori in 2006 as a compulsory part of my dip ed., but I can't remember anything other than circles - teach in a cyclic way and keep coming back to content. So when asked "What do I want to know", I freeze. I have no idea - I'm so challenged in my own understanding and I'm so emotionally depleted that I'm struggling to know even where to begin. I feel like the student we write off as being disengaged: just tell me what I can do. Tell me something. I can't think yet because I feel so overwhelmed that I don't know where to start because everything is spinning. It's not that I'm intentionally disengaging, nor am I disengaging out of disrespect, apathy, or arrogance. Simply not knowing means there's nowhere where I can fit yet. Nothing to build from. Nothing that looks / sounds / feels familiar and I don't quite know what to do about it.

So when it came to writing my goal based on what I learned that session, sorry kaiako, it's still blank. I think it'll probably read "by the end of this term I will have prioritised the principles of Matauranga Māori and chosen one to incorporate into a class".

The following session on tikanga I thought I'd be a bit better with. I had a whole place on my back wall with the tikanga of my class written on it.
We respect:
Ourselves by doing our work and asking for help.
Others by supporting their efforts and encouraging their risks.
Learning by trying everything and trying again.
The environment by keeping it clean and keeping it calm.

Tikanga - a way of doing things. There are so many tikanga for so many differnt things. I kinda feel like my 10yo daughter a bit - she often laments all the rules she has to know. Why so many rules? Well, it's the way of doing things in society.

It's not that they were tricky, and many of them are already in place in my home even - we have Kai karakia at home, we just have them in English. It wouldn't be hard to ask someone to help me translate a few into te Reo Māori for me. It also wouldn't be hard to have some karakia that we all know to start each lesson with. Every time I observe a Māori class, I see a karakia being given, and I really like it. There was a lot of tikanga Māori that really resonated with me, and I kept finding myself staring at the list in awe and wonder, "that's really ok to do?"

One of the reasons I came to HPSS for my next set of challenges was to extend further into skills that I valued and are normal here. I romantically forgot that challenges come with struggles, and learning pits are innate too! Fortunately I can recognise that in myself - this is a learning pit, it won't last.

And fortunately also, I carry with me my learning from my previous kaumatua: to take one thing at a time, to be patient, to count on people to support me in my struggles (bless you, Whaea! Answering my continuous questions).

And so, by the end of the term I will have started a journey with my year 13 students towards a deeper understanding of what "as Maori" really looks like.

To MLE or Not to MLE... That is the Question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The ways and means of teaching no longer relevant,

Or to take arms against school traditions

And by opposing change them.

To learn —to sleep, no more;

and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That past is heir to: 'tis a redundance

Devoutly futile.

To learn: to teach;

To teach: perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in the teaching of teens what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

They give us pause—they reflect upon our time spent

And they thank us for a life taught to dream.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of cynic?

Th'oppressor's wrong, the children create!

The pangs to innovate and lead the way,

Silences the office, and the spurns those

That block path many innovators take,

When naysayers might their quietus make

When learning flourishes. Who would history bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

When that the dread of visions unfulfilled,

The undiscovere'd brilliance, from whose mind

No brainchild is birthed, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills of tradition

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus custom does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of transformation

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great import and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Shakespeare was such a great writer. He had such a way of communicating big ideas. I borrowed his structure and changed up a few words to change Hamlet's speech to be one about the changing face of education.

Is it hypocritical to use a piece of writing more than 400 years old to lead into a post about Modern Learning Environments? The traditionalists might be surprised: No. Shakespeare has just as much place in modern teaching environments as in traditional schools. The teachers I know - in a range of school types - don't wheel out Shakespeare because they can't think of anything else, or it's the 'right thing to do'. Shakespeare's work comes out when it's the right fit for the class (although this might change if people are afraid that English teachers don't know how to teach, and an arbitrary panel of disengaged 'experts' tells the nation what they will and won't read and learn about...)

Open plan learning works. Modern learning environments work. Single-cell classrooms work. None of these concepts are new. Traditional teaching is no longer as relevant as it used to be. Flexible and responsive spaces enable flexible and responsive teachers. Flexibility and responsiveness happen in single-cell classrooms, MLEs, and OPLs.

As a student I was a quiet introvert in an MLE environment in intermediate. There were two teachers (sometimes more) around and 60 students in a twin-class set up (one room that was the length of two classrooms). There were three of these spaces in my school, a number of single-cell rooms, two rooms for independent learners... It had a film studio, a music room, a dedicated science room - and this was a public school.

I always felt my teachers knew me, and knew where I was at.

This year we moved, and my children have moved from a traditionally-built school to a full MLE school. They received excellent teaching at their previous school in their single cell rooms, however there are some significant differences I've noticed this term.

1. My eldest child has struggled with self-direction to start with because she was so used to being told what to do. She wasn't used to thinking for herself. This is a child who attended a gifted school one day a week alongside her regular school. The gifted school is a place where creativity and own thinking was not only encouraged, but expected. She one referred to her new school being like the gifted school on steroids. It has taken her a term to transition, however I still believe that this environment will be of the highest benefit to her as there is a duel focus: academics and relationships.

2. My son is at the other end of the scale where he has a team of therapists and other adults around him helping him to access the curriculum. At his most recent team meeting I was blown away to hear that he was talking, participating, answering questions in class, and that he had made friends BECAUSE HE WANTED TO. This had never happened before - he usually required a lot of intervention from his teacher aide to support him to do these things. He is a completely new child  the MLE. He is not lost, he is a happy, contributing member of the class.

3. My third daughter is exceptionally advanced in her reading, and so I give her te Reo books to read because she loves learning the language. When her teachers found out, they invited her to run a workshop to share her love of te Reo with others. She's so excited to be given this opportunity.

What I love about my children's school is that they acknowledge individual needs and have flexibility. There are large open spaces and small enclosed spaces. There are quiet spaces and communicative spaces. The teaching is online, off-line, high-tech, low-tech. It's hands-on, hands-off, It's reading, writing, maths, and science. It's playdough, it's music, it's sport, it's STEM. It's relationship building, communication enabling. It's a place to try, to learn, to make mistakes, to have a go, to fail, to try a different way, to explore, to make sense, to focus, to refine, to generate, to evaluate, to test, to refine. It's a place to learn to be people. A place to learn knowledge and skills. A place to practise skills.

My experience shows me that MLEs work - and they work well. So well, in fact, I too have returned to the MLE environment. I want to be a part of this. In a world where, like the Industrial Revolution times, society is going through a massive change, unlike the IR times we have a different type of change. It's exciting. I want to prepare my students for this world as I explore it with them. I want to go out into businesses and enterprises and find out what the future of employment looks like, and bring it back to school and unpack that with my students. My students in my MLE school get the same high expectations placed on them that I've always in traditional schools. They also get to have real-world experiences to an extent I've never been able to provide on my own before. The students' thinking is sophisticated and interesting.

Do all of them always do all their work all the time? No. I still work with teenagers. I still have to keep track of where they're at and make sure they're completing what they need to complete so that they can demonstrate to others the proof of their thinking ability. If they don't do their work, they still get fair and logical consequences.

Kids will be kids and environment's important. An MLE can, in fact, be found in a traditional, single-cell classroom. I certainly did, and many of my colleagues did too. It's not about being right - it's about being flexible. When spaces and teachers are flexible, they can respond to the needs of the students. That's what teaching is about.

I believe in MLEs. They work. But even more, I believe in teachers who teach in these spaces, and the kids who learn.