Te Tiriti o Waitangi parntnership

Since beginning my journey at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, I have come a long way in my personal journey with te reo Māori, mātauranga Māori, and Tikanga. I was recently asked about how I have incorporated culturally sustaining pedagogy in my leadership. After some more reflection, I identified a key overarching idea in the way that I have come to work in this space. Just like relationship counsellors might advise you to choose your partner every day, I believe we must do the same for our Tiriti o Waitangi partnership. We must choose our partners every day. Here are a few of the things that I have chosen to do as I continue to find ways to invest in this partnership:

1. I start every single course I teach with my pēpepha. The first time I did this a few years ago I was super uncomfortable. I prefaced to my students that I was learning to do this still. After I completed saying my pēpepha, the students clapped and were incredibly supportive of my visible vulnerability in my new learning. A few years down the track and this is now such a comfortable practice, that I have supported others through this journey too.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Practice makes perfect. This is not a surprise to anyone. However, as teachers, we are often cast as the 'knowers' of knowledge. Admitting we don't know and publically working on improving can be uncomfortable and confronting. Yet we must do this if we wish to make progress in our learning. 

2. This year our whole school learnt a haka to farewell our foundation principal. I embraced this opportunity to learn alongside my students and colleagues with enthusiasm and determination. The moment we finally did this haka for our departing principal will forever live in my heart. A few weeks later we also welcomed our new principal. Again, our whole school joined in the haka and our school waiata. This too made me incredibly proud to be part of our school. Too often at formal events the "hire a kapa haka" approach is taken, aka. kapa haka students do all the waiata and haka while the senior leadership and teachers watch, not knowing the words confidently enough to be able to join in.

KEY TAKEAWAY: Our commitment to learning tikanga needs to include everyone in our organisations. When we devote time and resources to this, we can grow as a community. We can change a culture. Being a leader in this space means that sometimes we have to role model not knowing but doing the work to learn. 

3. One of the challenges I have encountered in my own practice as I work to incorporate more mātautanga Māori has been around ensuring that I do not exclusively focus on historical knowledge. It is important that we do not inadvertently cast Māori as a culture from the past. Māori is a thriving, evolving modern culture. One of the ways that I have sought to do this is through showcasing and championing the work of Māori scientists, artists, and other thought leaders working today. My students particularly enjoyed looking at the stunning work from the Mana Moana project that showcased the work of Māori and Pasifika artists in response to climate change. They also really enjoyed learning about how waka are still made today and the physics that applies when these are built. There is a great series on YouTube that my students particularly enjoyed. This even led to some of them designing their own waka - a task that was particularly well received by a student with a renowned carver in the family. In each of these contexts, I had to initiate the conversation with my colleague to include a more culturally located context in our learning. However, in each case, they could see the benefit once they saw the way students were able to engage with this task. 

KEY TAKEAWAY: Once you start looking, there are so many Māori thought leaders, scientists, artists, historians, etc. who we can draw on as role models and inspiration for our students and oureslves. In my experience, Māori and non-Māori students find living breathing role models much easier to relate to than when we only look at historical figures.

4. As an Across School Leader for our kāhui ako, one of the key areas that I have focused on this year is how we know if we are making a difference for our Māori students. Too often schools create interventions that are done to the students rather than with students. Too often schools don't have any data about how students experienced the interventions a school put in place. As a result, when working with our kāhui ako Within School Leaders this year I have developed resources to prompt them to disaggregate their data. I have also continued to focus on developing my impact coaching skills. However, this year I have made sure to ask; "how do you know if this is making a difference for Māori students?". This has led to teams making a much greater effort to learn what is happening for their Māori students, and in some cases, it has led to teachers beginning to champion the voices of their students

KEY TAKEAWAY: Most teachers really do care about their students. Once they really get to 'see' what our Māori students are experiencing in school, their journey with culturally responsive pedagogy tends to accelerate, simply because they don't find the systemic bias in our education systems and schools acceptable. Hence, a key part of leadership in this space needs to be around how we help our teachers and middle leaders see the bias in the system more effectively. 

Inquiry baskets of knowledge

It's been a little while since I've blogged regularly so to get back in the habit, I thought I would share one photo every day for the remainder of the school year to capture some of my learning, reflections, and creations for 2022. Each photo is accompanied by a short caption. The idea is to keep it short, simple, and reflective. I would love for people to join me - if you do, make sure you include #edphoto22 on whatever platform you share it (Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, wherever...). 

This is a photo of students' literal baskets of knowledge. Their key learning and questions from their inquiries were summarised on strips of paper that were then weaved into a kete (basket). Students also reflected on the purākau (story) of Tāne and the baskets of knowledge and what this could teach them about how to tackle their own pursuit of knowledge in their inquiry. Here is the full resource if you wish to repurpose or reuse it.

Self-managing learners. Yeah right.

The New Zealand Curriculum demands that we develop 'self-managing' learners, yet how many of our students were unable to do so without our constant hovering, timekeeping and nagging in lockdown? How many students were 'missing in action' and just had an extended holiday instead of learning from home?

What does it take to help students become truly self-managing? What does it look, sound and feel like? I am of the opinion that it doesn't involve quiet compliance and meeting every deadline. Instead, I imagine something a bit more like Jimmy Neutron - creative, resilient, self-motivated, sets their own personally relevant goals and challenges, capable of complex problem-solving, empowered. The process involves a lot of trial and error, is usually quite messy, and takes a 'nuanced' view around deadlines. In other words, deadlines that work to the teacher's schedule take a back seat to authentic deadlines set by alien kidnappings and the like.

The Jimmy Neutron self-managing learner example raises some important questions:

• How might we develop learners that are confidently and competently self-managing, who will continue to learn successfully without us hovering over them?
• Once we have successfully developed more self-managing learners, how might we continue to engage and support them on their personal learning journey?

image source

So what does it take to turn an unmotivated Bart Simpson into a Jimmy Neutron? 

Well, for a start, you wouldn't. Bart Simpson is his own person and needs you to recognise and respect his mana and rangatiratanga (his spirit, his agency, his right to self-sovereignty). We should not be trying to turn Bart into anyone. Instead, we need to think about how our classrooms, schools and online environments, might create the conditions in which Bart Simpson wants to, and can find ways to engage in the learning on his own terms, in a positive way. How might we help Bart be his 'best self's so to speak, instead of asking Bart to be a Jimmy, and forever failing to do so because he is not Jimmy.

If we couldn't engage Bart Simpson in class, what are the chances that we engaged him during lockdown? What are the chances that Bart would have self-managed and continued his learning at home? Probably quite well if you are talking about skateboarding, but less so for algebra. So what do we need to do differently at school to help Bart realise his best self, capable of self-managing his learning around skateboarding and algebra?

To start with, Bart's teachers first need to overcome years of his mistrust in teachers who have profiled and distrusted him. They will need to overcome years of him feeling like his work is never good enough, that his teachers don't value him, want him in class or respect him. He will need teachers to see past his rebellion, to a child who is probably hurting because he is made to go to school every day - a place where he feels unwelcome and no sense of belonging. As it turns out, the first step to starting to build Bart's self-managing around algebra has very little to do with algebra. 

Power and art

Just three months ago I was hopping across Europe visiting museums and art galleries. It seems unthinkable that so much has changed as a result of covid-19 in such a short space of time. We are now on day three of lockdown in New Zealand. And all of a sudden, I find that I have time to finish a blog post I started in January!

This past holiday I had the pleasure of visiting numerous art galleries, listening to art history podcasts and completing Adobe Illustrator tutorials online. I also had a solid week of super intense practice while I prepared for a group aerial circus performance (that's me on the right!). While I am a science and sometimes maths teacher, I often find that the arts is where much of my inspiration comes from.

I have learned that taking the time to be creative and appreciate the creative arts, makes a huge positive difference to my personal wellbeing. It is also more often than not, a catalyst for deep thinking and reflection in my day to day practice within education. Recently for example, I learned about artist Lisa Brice from listening to a great podcast by art curator Katy Hessel. 

Source: Women in Art - Tate via Khan Academy

As some of you may know, female artists are remarkably absent in art history (go ahead, make a list of all the artists you know about and then see how many are women). Women are primarily present as the subject of paintings, and hence, are always represented through a male filter, or 'male gaze' as Hessel calls it. Lisa Brice, the artist mentioned above, recasts women from art history. This 'recasting' means that historic portraits of women where they are portrayed as weak, vulnerable, where they are in positions of disempowerment and hopelessness, are reinvented to give the women power. 

Take for example the famous "Parting at Morning" by Sir William Rothenstein (see below left). The women featured in the portrait was described in his journal as destitute. She attempted to sell him paintings. He could not afford them however instead, she posed for him to complete various drawings. He describes the women as "not without a certain cadaverous beauty" and included with her portrait a poem modified from Robert Browning:

Round the cliff on a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the Mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.

In essence, this painting casts this woman in a 'walk of shame'. The painting and the inclusion of the poem immortalised this woman in her state of destitution and shame. What's more, there is a more convoluted message about objectification captured here, about how this woman is still pretty even if she looks like death warmed up.

Photo on the left from Tate, and photo on the right included here without permission from Ennigaldi

On the right, however, Lisa Brice has recast this woman. Instead of the vulnerable, destitute, cadaverous women who Browinging implies is reliant on the men in her world, she is recast to have a certain "I don't give a f*%$# and don't mess with me look about her. Brice essentially attempts to restore some power to this woman.

So why does this matter in education? Well, the redistribution of power in these two artworks paint a stark contrast of how the same person can be represented. If we could hold up Lisa Brice's lense to education, would such a contrast be revealed there too? For example, almost every New Zealander would recognise Marcus King's famous representation of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (below). How might this painting be different if Māori were recast to have more power. Would there by more Māori standing rather than sitting on the ground? What else might be different? 

Image form Archives New Zealand

There are those who would argue that yes, women, indigenous peoples, and other minority groups are represented in ways that diminish their power within education and academic contexts (Ann Milne re. Māori, and  Jane Gilbert re. women in science, being just two names that jump to mind). With this recasting in mind, I am wondering what education might look like if power distribution was fairer. Which aspects of my classroom practice and leadership would look completely different? What knowledge and skills would be prioritised in schools instead? And most important, what can we do to ensure that our own biases don't cloud our view when we consider power distribution in education? 

Manaakitanga

Post number 3 for my 10 posts in 10 days challenge...

PS: Whatever you do, don't read half of this post. Read the whole thing. 

 

Learning Hubs at Hobsonville Point Secondary School forms an important part of our curriculum. They use an advisory model to take pastoral care to the next level. In term 3, our learning in these advisories centred around the concept of manaakitanga.

I was very aware that building the term's learning around manaakitanga came with some challenges. Firstly, in New Zealand, we are often guilty of pretending to be culturally responsive by slapping a te Reo Māori name on anything. Calling a Community of Learning a Kāhui Ako is not what makes it culturally responsive, the same way that giving the unit, theme or topic that we are studying a te Reo Māori name would not make it culturally responsive either. This lands us in the treacherous territory of tokenism. 

A second risk I identified was around cultural misappropriation. This can be described as when "one culture, most often one that has a historical record of oppressing other cultures, engages in the unauthorised taking of some aspects of another, most often a minority culture" (Metcalfe, 2012). Our schools are saturated in Eurocentric thinking, systems and bias, and as a result, I can't help but wonder if our dominant culture has 'taken' this concept, potentially without authority. 

And finally, my biggest concern, without understanding of the genealogy of the concept we were studying, its cultural meaning, and significance, was I at risk of misrepresenting this culturally significant term to my students? In particular, it seemed to me that by misrepresenting the meaning of manaakitanga through my own Eurocentric bias and unintentional ignorance, I could surreptitiously be erasing the cultural significance and supplanting it with covert Eurocentric cultural ideas instead. 

So what did I do? Well, the only thing that seemed appropriate to do. Don't represent my view of manaakitanga, but instead seek out ways to represent the Māori view of manaakitanga. Inspired by the work of famous writer and psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and great NZ educators like Heemi McDonald, I looked to stories for help. 

I stared by reading students a story of Te Pura, the guardian taniwha of Wairoa as told in Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers. I then asked each of my students to look for a story connected to their family, culture, heritage or identity that somehow represented manaakitanga. I encouraged my students to speak to their parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles and more to help locate an appropriate story. I hoped that by encouraging students to seek out their own stories, that this might provide an opportunity for students to build their own cultural capital while ensuring that I don't just accidentally teach my own version of manaakitanga.  Finally, we also watched a movie, selected by the students for its portrayal of ideas related to manaakitanga. After examining these three stories, we then discussed what the shared attributes or themes were of the stories that in most cases, spanned multiple shared cultures. 

Student's sketchnotes of manaakitanga stories. 

Of course, it is early days in my journey towards culturally sustaining pedagogy and there is a lot about the approach above that needs improvement. Although the above shows an example of me 'trying', it is simply not enough that we try. If we are to truly restore the harm that has been done by two hundred years of colonisation and its effects, it is essential that we try, and then evaluate, learn more, iterate, seek feedback, repeat. Our efforts towards culturally sustaining pedagogy are like taking a step in the wrong way on a travellator. We need to take enough steps, and take them in fast enough succession if we hope to overcome the direction that history's travellator is sending us in.

Rediscovering student agency

I realised with a shock yesterday how little I've blogged this year! So, I have set a personal challenge for myself, 10 posts in 10 days. It shouldn't be too hard to turn all of my draft posts into complete ones, right? Or post a quick vlog reflecting of my day? Or share a strategy that I have tried? Maybe you're keen to try too?

It seems that not too long ago, everyone was talking about student agency. Many a tweet talked about self managing students, blog posts were written, and there were probably multiple sessions about it at ULean. I know Claire Amos did a great talk about it, and Steve Mouldey did a great presentation. Lately, however, I have found myself looking at these resources in a new light. I have always believed that student agency is a key ingredient for success as it helps students to become self-managing, life-long learners. I still think this a worthy goal for success in a rapidly changing, fast-paced world. However, student agency has taken on a new sense of urgency and importance in my practice of late. Prompted by my Spiral of Inquiry in 2018, I wondered whether student agency might contribute in restoring some of the power to those students and families for whom colonisation and embedded system bias has led to feeling disempowerment?

In schools, command and control models dominate in so many ways. We tell our students where to be, when to be there, and how to act when they get there. We tell our students what to wear, what not to wear, and in some cases, what their hair can and cannot look like. We tell them when they can eat, when they may use the restroom. We tell our students what they should learn, and how they should learn it. Whether inadvertently or not, we decide what our students should value through deciding how they should spend their time, what we assess, and what qualifies as "justified" reasons for missing school. The trouble is, every decision that we make FOR students rather than WITH students is another instance where we are removing agency and power.

Once I began to notice all the ways that I remove agency from my students, I was alarmed to discover that in my own practice, despite priding myself on a student-centred philosophy’ I was constantly enacting my power over the students. I began feeling uncomfortable that 17 and 18-year-old students felt the need to ask permission to go to the toilet. If we cannot even trust young people with going to the toilet, then what kind of messages were we sending about trusting them with their learning? And while we might argue that some students misbehave and cannot be trusted to go and come back in a timely manner, why is it that we feel justified to mistrust the majority because of the actions of a minority?

Building on my learning from 2018, I started this year with a focus on rediscovering, revisiting, refining and kickstarting student agency in my classroom (again). I am hoping to move from the 'false choice' model (where I give students a choice between tasks I designed) to one where the power is truly shared. In framing this thinking, I found Hart's Ladder of Participation really helpful. Below is the description of one of the experiments I tried in my teaching this year in response.

The students and I started the term by unpacking the rubric that would be used to assess their learning in our module called Star Trek. Together, we identified the skills and knowledge we would need to gain by the end of the unit.

Students then split into small groups to design their own lesson (or a small series of lessons) around a learning objective they had written (I had to teach them how to write these first). They researched their chosen area of focus, designed and made activities, made and found resources, as well as identify success criteria, keywords and ideas. Once students had completed their planning, I worked with each group to 'quality assure' their lesson and to allocated badges for each lesson. From here, each lesson was loaded as a mission on our Starfleet Mission Tracker (see image below) aka. kanban board. If you are not familiar with kanban, it's a super simple project management tool that really helps visualise workflow, prioritisation, etc. I 100% recommend using this with team, students and yourself! I created the video below to help my students understand kanban.

Using Trello, we set up a kanban board where each card serves as a mission. A click on each mission reveals the instructions and resources for each lesson. As students completed the various parts of the lesson, they would mark items as done on the To-Do list also included on the mission card.

Expanded view of a mission.

Over the course of the term, students started each class by selecting from the AVAILABLE MISSIONS what they would complete that day and moving it into the TO DO column on their personal mission tracker. As they were completing the lesson, the mission would be in their DOING column, and finally, when they have completed all items on the checklist, they would move the card into the DONE column.

To help students make selections that would support them gaining all the skills towards the rubric, we also created specialisations using the badges that we allocated. Each student thus played an active role in designing the class' lessons, choosing their specialisation and choosing the lessons to help them achieve their specialisation.

So did it work?
It was great to see that students responded well to this teaching strategy. As the teacher of this class, it was remarkable how easy this class became to manage. Every student knew what they were doing and what their next steps were. My stress levels and planning time was significantly reduced! (This was an added bonus, I hadn't planned on this). Students' reported experience of this approach also showed that students really felt that their learning was personalised.

However, what was particularly interesting about this approach was that out of the five Maori and/or Pasifika students in this class who completed the in-class survey, three out of the five students gave themselves the highest possible score for the three indicators in the survey:

• I feel proud of the work that I did in this class.
• I feel confident that the work I did in this class is good quality.
• I did my best in this class.

Interestingly, the other two students still identified in the survey that the learning was new and free (Student A) and that they linked the learning (Student E). 

All in all, I think this was a pretty successful experiment and next step for my Spiral of Inquiry. This year I am continuing my focus on "How might we develop assessment that enables success for academically ‘at risk’ students?" I look forward to further experiment with this approach in senior classes next...