Ngā mihi o te wā. Happy New Year.
The start of a new working year is the perfect opportunity to implement and try new things. For me this includes checking over my ways of doing things to make sure I am working efficiently and utilising the connections I have. I am grateful to be able to work alongside kura and schools and would like to share some tips based in common questions I get asked to help kick start your new year.
| Ka tangi te tītī | The mutton bird cries |
| Ka tangi te kākā | The parrot cries |
| Ka tangi hoki ahau | I also cry |
| Tihei mauri ora | Behold there is life |
Every year New Zealand celebrates The Treaty, but how well do we as teachers help our young people understand it more deeply? As a teacher how are you planning to help your students with this? I remember vividly my fifth form social studies teacher announced to the class, “Oh, we’ll leave The Treaty this year because it is too hard to teach.” How many teachers feel this way and place The Treaty in the ‘too hard basket’? My advice to teachers would be to start small and give it go; after all our children deserve to learn about New Zealand’s past.
As a starting point, learning to say your students’ and local place names correctly is important as it acknowledges and values their mana, prestige and who they are.
Find out about the personal stories of the young people in your class, from their families’ experiences. When you are ready, make contact with your local community by finding out about the histories of the area.
There’s an old saying, “There’s nothing more certain than change”, and this will certainly be true as educators in NZ prepare to return to work in 2016. Whether we’re re-thinking what we teach, how we teach, where we teach and even who we teach, dealing with the demands of change is the biggest challenge facing schools, kura, and centres today.
Consider the following examples of change on the horizon in our education system in NZ in 2016…