Children working in hybrid learning environment

Disruptive educators and quality learning design

Posted on by

Complexity and challenging times

We’ve encountered many new kupu/words/terms recently that describe different approaches to the delivery of learning. Hybrid learning, online, off-site, blended learning, synchronous, asynchronous, remote learning, are just a few. These disruptions come at a significant stage in our national curriculum refresh, as we near our vision for learning in 2025.

I have been fortunate to experience and observe many students, educators and schools during unexpected serious ‘events’: COVID, floods, earthquakes, community losses, and family trauma. In these times the existing systems and strategies that support learning are immediately disrupted, timetables forced to change and adapt, sometimes in an immediate and reactive time frame. These events can cause issues around wellbeing and learning, as well as inclusion, equity and accessibility. In addition, stress, workloads, negative behaviours, pastoral incidents, and group dysfunction can increase. 

I’d like to share in this blog my observations about learning design; what happens in our classrooms. How do the effects of ‘disruptive events’, both human and natural, test the robustness and quality of what ākonga (students) experience in the classroom and our pedagogical choices as educators?

Human disruption comes in many forms

An online group of DisruptEd educators, and many ‘disobedient’ educators across Aotearoa, are championing educational disruption. Disobedient disruptors deliberately seek to improve the effect of outdated educational systems and strategies to better meet the needs of ākonga. These educators have much in common with the natural and societal disruptors. They test existing systems, to see that they are fit for purpose in meeting learner needs, now and in the future. This group of educators see beyond the surface of the systems and strategies to the depth of the systems and their impact on our ākonga. This ‘seeing’ leads them to intervene; to become disruptive and disobedient, to make changes, deliberately design intervention pedagogies, take transformational action that questions and begins to shift the systems that surround them to reducing and removing their negative impacts.

They do this quietly and almost invisibly. They almost always demonstrate the instinctive values of empathy and equity, because they know how it feels to be disconnected and excluded. They show humility and passion, and are naturally collaborative, believing that "it takes a village to raise a child". Their lens of equity, inclusion, and awareness, is wide and deep. They focus on relationships they have with colleagues, students, whānau, community, local council and businesses. These networks provide both the guidance for their intervention, and the resources that support it. They also create an invisible 'wellbeing shield' system of teaching and learning within their classrooms, that protects and inspires ākonga and them as educators, from the negative influences outside. They design quality learning that gets into, and more importantly stays in, the hearts and minds of their learners, because they know the greatest tool of change available is their fundamental task of learning design and relationships.

“The design of learning is the fundamental task of teachers – they do it every day, sometimes explicitly as an extension of their planning, but more often it's what happens almost naturally as a result of the structures and systems that exist in most classrooms.” (Wenmoth, 2022)

How quality learning design looks and feels

In almost every case I have observed, these disruptors are experts at the design and delivery of authentic, engaging, and outstanding learning. They also take a huge social risk, as their efforts and solutions can be unwelcome to colleagues and leaders who like the status quo. So often, in spite of the systems that surround and restrict them, they design classroom learning that develops students' creativity, critical thinking, resilience, collaboration, connectedness, empathy, self-awareness, testing bias in themselves and those around them. They knowingly create a barrier from the damaging school systems and external events, by designing fun, engaging, high quality learning. They constantly develop positive, equity focused relationships, and inclusive learning environments. You can feel the uplifting power and energy of these as you enter their classrooms. When these pedagogies are in place, I see students in a ‘learning flow-state’, where time passing goes unnoticed.

Ākonga are bursting with passion and excitement, spending hours actively problem solving, not realising time is passing, creating learning euphoria and wellbeing. Designing, building, testing, failing, trialling, feeling the full joy of learning just like they did in pre-school where the systems were truly student-centric and equitable. This form of learning design transcends time, place, events, internet and device access, as it is grounded in the ability to work together to find solutions. It gets to the depth of what it is to be human, connecting at our most basic level.

The disobedient, disruptive classroom appears chaotic and disorganised from an external view. Look more closely and you will see undetermined problems and solutions being discussed, co-constructed, solved and collaborated on, educators and learners side-by-side. Failures are embraced as valuable learning opportunities. Students who know how to design, jump between stages and steps, model, test, evaluate, present, and refine as their process demands they do so. As they develop this capability, they begin to, unknowingly, design themselves.

Quality learning design – an authentic experience

A Year 12 student is learning in a focused local curriculum environment; alongside community businesses providing support and materials designing and building a Hobbit playhouse for a new space at the nearby community pre-school. Normally this is a young man who struggles with self-confidence, fitting in, numeracy, literacy, dyslexia and dyscalculia, and grasping scientific principles. During this authentic learning experience, he is not at all aware of his ‘academic’ personal learning challenges, or that he is exemplifying assessment for learning strategies. He has stepped into his creative, observational, empathetic, caring, human, and innovative logical mind, driven by the authentic needs of the pre-school children he is designing for. His desire to earn NCEA credits is nowhere to be seen.

Photo of the house from Hobbit

Credit: photo by Joshua Harris on Unsplash

In one part of this design project, he is communicating his creativity visually, modelling a Roman arched window using Autodesk Inventor (free student industry standard computer aided design (CAD) software). Using this complex visual design modelling software does not highlight his learning challenges, it bypasses them, and instead uses his refined cognitive abilities to make alternative and usually more efficient creative and innovative connections.

The iterative problem solving design process, requires him to seek out particular knowledge, understand, then do, act, as it is needed. Not focusing on his existing knowledge or lack of, the design process has guided him to understand and do. He has designed an outcome to improve the lives of a range of very young tamariki. Without realising the complexity he has achieved, he has applied the static physics, calculations and principles of forces of a Roman Arch – hoffnerphysics into his Hobbit playhouse, designed and custom built in a complete end-to-end process. He has drawn on the disciplinary knowledge of maths, science, technology learning and without noticing, has understood and applied understanding of principles he needed to, when he needed to, in order to successfully create a completed, quality outcome. He has demonstrated exceptional standards of oral, written and visual literacy, is authentically collaborating, gathering data, feedback, advice, sharing with and learning from his classmates who are also engaged in problem-solving, authentic and unknown, design thinking mode, and he is enjoying it!

Perhaps best of all in our current environment, he is empowered by designing for equity. He has made the circular entry door wide and high enough with a cobbled ramp access, the interior furniture and the window sized to be accessible for all ages and sizes of preschoolers, toddlers to 5 year olds including the 4 year old cerebral palsy girl in a wheelchair. With support from his local marae, the walls of the playhouse are decorated with poutama, tukutuku symbolising genealogy, learning and achievement. There are textured images from the fantasy trilogy, labels are 3D printed in braille, and movie filming locations are shown on a map of Aotearoa.

 

Infographic

Learning design for wellbeing

Best of all, he exudes passion, deep happiness and satisfaction, as he immerses himself in his own measurable and accountable, lead-follow-lead design process. He doesn’t notice when he has completed requirements of multi-disciplinary achievement and unit standards, almost invisibly guided in the potential quality of those outcomes by his disruptive educator. He isn’t thinking from a place of 'self’ as he moves through his challenge, he isn’t counting credits, ticking NCEA boxes, he is feeling the same joyful learning experience that the pre-schoolers he is designing for are in.

The educator is in a supporting, observational role only. Design capability was established, strengthened and progressed during his Year 7 to 10 schooling. At senior secondary level, he is experiencing the freedom to be agentic, independent, resilient and autonomous, using these years to demonstrate his capabilities that step up naturally each year.

This learning strategy is not only great for his wellbeing. It reduces educator stress, workload and increases professional enjoyment. The educator can now be re-positioned to an agentic, 'aside' the learner role, noticing where and how during the process the student demonstrates specialist learning, the levels and disciplines the learning draws from, and is evidenced in. The educator collaborates and co-constructs learning design with other learning area specialists for guidance and advice as is required. Formative feedback is used throughout the process, as and when needed to ensure the learning evidence is documented and demonstrated clearly, for others to follow and give feedback on. This demonstration and documentation relies on digitally fluent students to draw on appropriate digital tools to use, record, design and transform their ideas into a feasible outcome. 

The completed outcome and design process documentation folio, provides evidence of assessment for learning across science, maths, technology (materials, digital and DVC technological areas), Social sciences and English, with over 40 credits at NCEA Level 2 and 3.

An interesting human observation of this classroom is how effortlessly ākonga transition into a creative-flow state. They are busy, engaged, and time passes very quickly. Reactions to the bell signalling the end of the session, is often unheard, and mostly unwelcomed.

Perhaps this is because ākonga have the opportunity to be designers and have responsibility for the design process, so feel the accountability, the views, culture and needs of the real people, stakeholders and end-users they are collaborating with. They are designers of ‘things’, products, systems, environments, spaces, and ultimately, themselves as emerging adults.

Design creativity being the most basic of human activities requires the highest order of thinking. To ‘intervene by design’ (the essence of technology/STEM/STEAMS learning) is to improve our environment and the things in it that humans use.

Design creativity involves many forms of thinking and forces the designer to both draw on existing understanding, and to seek out new knowledge to fill identified and obvious gaps.

Critical and ethical thinking – understanding the needs of people and place what is, what could and should be. 

Collaborative, community, and evaluative thinking – reacting to and taking on board feedback from the environment, stakeholders and end-users. Creating outcomes for others, develops equity thinking.

Creative and innovative thinking – developing resilience to test, trial and explore unknown concepts to see how well they may perform, be ‘fit for purpose’.

Thinking and learning in authentic, unknown contexts is both meaningful and engaging for all students. For students who learn differently, those with mild to severe learning needs that traditional learning often excludes, find themselves easily excelling as their creative connective brains thrive in this design environment. Design and its reliant thinking capabilities, develops students skills and understandings into real-world ‘event-proof’ capabilities.

If we are courageous enough to be proactive rather than reactive, we could use our current complexities and challenging events to shine a lens of designing for equity in our classrooms

Learning design for equity

Could the most important focus be on how we design high quality classroom learning that develops capabilities in creativity, critical thinking, innovation, communication, collaboration, empathy, patience and resilience, challenge and question bias,  where the vision, goal and outcome demonstrate equity? Being able to design effective and high quality learning has always been the core role of educators, but how many of your colleagues actually know how to design learning that is measurable, accountable and meaningful? 

Maybe a shared definition of future focused high quality learning design could be one that is measurable in how it contributes to equity, supports learner transition and progression, provides that elusive future focus we are searching for? 

Traditional systems and disruption

Across all ages and year levels I have seen the students of these ‘disruptors’ regardless of being 5-years-old or 18-years-old, demonstrate passionate, meaningful, connected and transformative learning.

“projects, passion, peers, and play. In short, we believe the best way to cultivate creativity is to support people working on projects based on their passions, in collaboration with peers and in a playful spirit. Most schools in most countries place a higher priority on teaching students to follow instructions and rules (becoming A students) than on helping students develop their own ideas, goals, and strategies…. Opposite: I believe the rest of school (indeed, the rest of life) should become more like kindergarten.” (Resnick, 2018)

So do we want academic, credit-counting students, or do we want healthy, resilient, creative, collaborative students who will become the adults of our future society?

Perhaps best of all these things, this design approach to high quality learning has the biggest positive impact on personal hauora, resilience, connectedness, and wellbeing. The disruptive ‘events’ that we have and continue to experience are significantly impacting the hauora of our rangitahi and tamariki, their whānau and communities. 

We understand that our education systems are no longer ‘fit for purpose’. The increasing numbers and frequency of ‘events’, are handing out a pounding and an opportunity to school systems. Some systems, (such as streaming, timetabling and hierarchy of learning areas) are clearly not only not serving the needs of our present learners, educators and communities, they are often creating very real barriers that damage the learning and the child. 

Disruptive and disobedient educators

These disruptive and disobedient educators also go beyond their own classroom and school systems, by making small changes that disrupt traditional barriers. They bypass transition systems, building relationships with local year six, seven and eight primary educators, maybe through kāhui ako networks, so they can get meaningful student data to enable their goal of a ninth year of learning. Within their own school systems, these educators are creating strategies to ensure they can teach the same class of students in year nine and ten, so that learning is consistent, coherent, and correctly prepares the student for success at NCEA. In our Hobbit playhouse example, the educator made sure all students had deep design capabilities, confidence in collaboration, community connectedness, and could authentically experience joyful learning and relive their preschool experience by being creative. They had permission over a sustained period of time, to enjoy and celebrate failing that developed sustainable levels of resilience, self awareness and critical consciousness.

In Disobedient Teaching: Surviving and Creating Change in Education (2017), Welby Ings describes how external events and disruptive/disobedient educators sit within current educational systems:

"As educational institutions perceive talent, few innovators are attracted to professional structures that expect them to be a cog in a machine. Highly innovative people may train as teachers, but they rarely stay long in the systems.” (p.127)

As we hear so often, those with the passion and desire to redesign the systems, the ones we need for things to change, likely leave despondent, burnt out and exhausted. 

So if negatively impacting events like covid, earthquakes, floods, acts of terror, abuse and crime within our communities, are likely to continue, then maybe it is time to consider, what is the core role of educators? Is it to be disruptive and disobedient to the educational systems they exist within? And if so, what does this mean for our classroom educators, communities, leaders, and decision-makers?

What can each educator do then? Being responsible for a classful of sponge-like minds is the greatest privilege of any adult. Education is society's biggest R&D opportunity; to research the next generation, to design and develop the required future.

So what about sustainability and longevity?

Rejecting short term thinking and ineffective systems, learners who experience high quality future-focused learning, will then contribute to the ‘thinking-long’ philosophy by becoming transformational members of society, in groups with strengthened community hauora, equity, connectedness, resilience and patience.

Surely learning that remains in the heart and minds of learners, that could rise above and resist the impact of external events is the goal for all educators wherever we are in the system?

We have heard about this learning ‘utopia’ for many years from Sir Ken Robinson, Michae Fullan, Derek Wenmoth and others, about the ‘thinking-long’ approach where school systems, timetables, local and national political cycles could be designed to serve seven future generations, rather than then year/three year/term goals, ERO cycle, or reporting schedules. 

Our wero?

Our wero is currently to design new and equitable ways to deliver learning. Could now also be the time to re-focus on ‘the fundamental task of teachers’; meet the needs of every student for the whole of their schooling by being adept designers of high quality, future focused learning and systems, that will safely ride the waves of any external ‘events’ and evolve the no-longer fit-for-purpose systems we exist in? 

Talk to us at CORE if you want to explore the possibilities raised in this thought piece with one of our professional learning facilitators.

References:

Ings, W. (2017), Disobedient Teaching : Surviving & Creating Change in Education, Published by Otago University Press

Resnick, R. (2018)  Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play, Published by The MIT Press

Wenmoth, D. (2022) retrieved from Futuremakers website

 

 

read more
Posted in
Matariki constellation

Matariki – our past, our future

Posted on by

Ahhhh Matariki, here you are again. This year, I think, your presence will be different. This time more people know your name. This time they will look for you. This time, the ancient being you are, will be honoured. Mānawatia a Matariki. 

I paused just the other night and looked at the sky cloaked in all its glory. Each star, millions of miles away, ever constant, ever seeing, ever present. My momentary reflection made me think about just how old the stars are. They have led generations, they have guided waka around the world, they have given signs and have provided comfort and wise counsel. 

They remain the same, yet we have changed. Our world is ever changing – he ao hurihuri tēnei ao. 

The word ‘mātai’ is synonymous with star gazing. It is also a word that we use for ‘examine’. In the development of the new Aotearoa New Zealand and Te Takanga o te Wā histories curricula, mātai is used in the guiding whakataukī Mātai whakamuri, kia anga whakamua – look to the past to move forward. Matariki provides the impetus for us to do just that, reflect on what has gone before and to prepare for the future. So what then is our past, and what will be our future? 

With every generation comes change. We have evolved as a society, and continue to evolve as a society. That is how nature works. And thank goodness for that. Those of us who have glimpsed into the window of our past know we have seen dark times. We still see, feel and hear the impact of those times, that is, if we choose to do so. For those that are yet to learn the history of this land, the time has arrived. 

Prior to the signing of te Tiriti o Waitangi, te reo Māori was the predominant language of the land. Māori culture, society and identity were intact and māori (normal). In the span of the next one hundred and fifty plus years we experienced the most horrific legislation, for example the 1879 Māori Prisoners Act (Māori imprisoned without trial for an indefinite period of time), the 1863 Suppression of Rebellion Act (any Māori deemed to be in rebellion with the Crown were punished with land confiscation), the 1863 New Zealand Settlements Act (allowed the Government to confiscate land as punishment for those who fought against the crown), the Pepper Potting policy in the 1960s where whānau Māori were housed in non-Māori areas to hasten the assimilation process, and the list goes on and on. Be it racist policy, the perpetuation of racist discourse, the racist slander we might even experience in our own families, down to the ‘everything is so Māori nowdays’,  tells a story of where we have been, and shows us where we need to get to in order to ensure the world looks different for our future generations. 

And the world is looking different. Hope is being restored each time a Māori word is pronounced correctly. It is restored every time ‘mainstream’ media uses te reo Māori in our TV shows. When we go to the supermarket and see bilingual signage, when people call out racist behaviour, when people invest time in learning the language, when people seek to change – to do better and to be better. When mātauranga Māori is naturalised back into ‘mainstream’ society, as we see with the Matariki holiday, things are changing. 

This year marks the first time we will celebrate an indigenous public holiday. To me, it is a very public way to honour mātauranga Māori. If people didn’t know what or who Matariki was, they will now. It is a deliberate act of re-indigenisation, challenging the face of eurocentricity and New Zealand culture. This, among other forms of cultural reclamation and revitalisation, are becoming more and more normal. Iwi are investing significant heart, time and resource into the identity of their uri – identity that has been, like land, dispossessed for generations, for many of us. We are pursuing cultural responsiveness. We see so much grace and willingness to work in partnership that there is a sense of te Tiriti o Waitangi slowly gaining mana and finding a home in society, beyond rhetoric and into spaces of authentic implementation. Although the term is beginning to sound slightly cliche, Aotearoa is getting ‘woke’. 

It is good to reflect on how far we have come. As we prepare to consider what our contribution to the narrative of our land will be, our collective story will eventually become history, what deliberate acts might we do to ensure mātauranga Māori is returned equitably to the winds, ngā hau e whā, of Aotearoa? Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the ‘wishing star’ of the Matariki cluster, will soon be visible to the eye. What might we lay before her, what are our hopes and dreams for our land? The responsibility for the future sits on our shoulders and in our hearts. He aha tāu? What part will you play?

 

read more
Posted in
Children working in classroom

Building relationships through letting go of control

Posted on by

Existing in relationships triggers everything.

Manulani Aluli Meyer (2008)

What does it mean to exist in relationships in the context of a classroom? One of the first things I was taught during my teacher training is that relationships are key. Up until recently I believed I was doing my best to foster relationships between myself, the students and their whānau. This belief in my abilities to build and develop meaningful relationships was tested when I was accepted as a recipient of the Dr Vince Ham eFellowship with Core Education. Through my research I was forced to re-evaluate what it meant to form relationships, and the work that needed to be done to do this.  My eFellow project was structured around this research question:

How can real-time reporting, via Seesaw, support reciprocal/ako relationships between learners, whānau and school?

I had a hunch that through live reporting, whānau, students and I would switch easily between the roles of teacher and learner. I optimistically saw myself collaborating with whānau and students to complete my research. This optimism was quickly dashed by my first whānau focus group discussion, which was attended by one parent. This experience taught me my first lesson – that good intentions and morning greetings are not enough to create the type of strong and trusting relationships I was looking for. I had not taken the time to nurture and grow these relationships, instead I expected whānau to engage in ways that were dictated by me. I expected whānau to engage with me simply because I had good intentions; I had failed to recognise inherent power imbalances.

According to Berrryman, Lawrence and Lamont (2018) to break down power imbalances and build culturally responsive relationships, educators must create spaces in which to first listen to our students and their whānau. Building respectful relationships takes time and commitment. I realised that I needed to create opportunities for whānau to be part of the classroom. I also needed to create opportunities and space for whānau to engage with me. I wanted my research project to build this space and I assumed it already existed. My initial forays into the project showed me that I could not move forward with relationships without first having established them. This realisation led me to organise a cake and reading afternoon with the children and their whānau.

I invited whānau to attend a cake and reading afternoon in the classroom during class time. In preparation the children baked a cake and we practiced two songs – Kina Kina and Si Manu Laititi to sing to the parents. The whānau of six children arrived and the children showed their parents their favourite parts of the classroom and what they had been learning. It was insightful and meaningful for me to watch the children interacting with their whānau. One chose to show how he used Mobilo© to make Beyblades©. Another wanted to show all the artwork they had completed in the classroom and proceeded to walk their family around to see it. I witnessed children choosing their favourite picture book and having their family read it to them. Interestingly the children whose whānau did not attend enjoyed interacting and playing games with the adults that were there. It showed me the value of a wider whānau connection, and how tamariki can connect with the whānau of other students in meaningful and productive ways.

Kirsty Macfarlane blog image

What was different?

The cake and reading day was a success, it was a turning point in my research and my understanding of what it meant to build relationships. But what was different?

  • The event was led by whānau and ākonga. Whānau came and went as they pleased, and ākonga led the interactions in the classroom. 

  • I let go of control. In essence this letting go involved me standing back and allowing the event to unfold, which was not as easy as it sounds. There were many times I wanted to step in, take over, point something out. It also made me feel very vulnerable, open to perceived judgement that I was not doing enough for my students.

Kirsty Macfarlane eFellows blog image

The cake and reading day was a pivotal moment for me. It resulted in the beginnings of an embodied understanding of what it means to be in relationship with whānau and ākonga. Relationships cannot be simply a cerebral undertaking; a checklist of steps to be taken to ensure that I ‘know’ the whānau and tamariki that make up my classroom. This research project has shown me that relationships take time and effort. Relationships are not static, they are continually changing and require each person to respond to that change. I am starting to realise that existing in relationships with tamariki and whānau means being uncertain, taking risks, listening, adapting, giving space and letting go of control. There is no handbook for relationship building, rather it requires each person to be present and open to the other—relationship building requires ongoing work.

The e-fellowship experience has enabled me to cultivate a new understanding of what it means to be relationally connected with whānau. This understanding manifested itself in the following ways:

  • Waiting in silence for as long as it took each whānau member to read a report before starting a conference: 

  • Staying on the phone and listening to a parent who was going through a difficult time:

  • Working with a parent helper’s timeframe— as opposed to a set schedule from me—so that they can pop in when they are able to: 

  • Creating opportunities for children to make more choices in the classroom: 

  • Taking the time to allow conversation to flow rather than launching straight into what I want to say: 

  • Inviting parents to be part of the class in ways determined by them.

All these examples demonstrate that time is one of the most important aspects embedded within building and maintaining relationships. Each relationship is different and requires constant attention and time. The question is how do I create this time and space, in a current education system that does not value it. 

You can read Kirsty Macfarlane's 2021 eFellow's report here. 

 

References

Berryman, M., Lawrence, D., & Lamont, R. (2018). Cultural relationships for responsive pedagogy: A bicultural mana ōrite perspective. Set: Research Information for Teachers 3-10

Meyer, M. A. (2008). Indigenous and authentic: Hawaiian epistemology and the triangulation of meaning. Handbook of critical and Indigenous methodologies, 217-232. Thousand Oaks; SAGE Publication.

 

 

 

 

 

read more
Posted in
Children smiling in classroom

Everyone belongs….don’t they? Creating safe spaces

Posted on by

Growing up in England, I often felt culturally different – not only to my peers, but also to my parents and extended family. School and home were two different worlds for me and neither overlapped and this left me feeling a sense of isolation, disconnectedness and voicelessness.  I have sensed those same feelings being re-lived in many of my students today. They don’t talk about their culture and what the student experience is like for them.  I suspect it was the same for me. 

As educators, we’re probably all be familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You cannot make progress towards the ultimate goal of self-actualisation without working your way through the lower tiers. Do our classroom spaces reflect this pathway? 

Creating spaces where students feel welcome and a sense of belonging is important. It takes continuous effort to make sure our classrooms are welcoming; that we are welcoming. Words we use are welcoming. We smile, we share kai and play games so that students can get to know each other and feel at ease in the class. We might do an activity to create a class treaty so that everyone gets a say in how the class culture will be.

However, I invite you to ask yourself the same question I asked myself: am I co-creating a space with students where they can truly be themselves? Or, am I inviting them into MY space, and wanting them to feel a sense of belonging in the space that I have created? 

This prompted me to put together a proposal for the Dr Vince Ham eFellowship, to do some research into something that was so important, something that could mean that inclusive really means inclusive of all.  My final research proposal aimed to collect student narratives and stories to identify factors that create a sense of belonging for students from diverse cultural backgrounds. 

From MY space to OUR space – don’t filter the culture

As part of my routine at the start of the year, I introduce myself to each of my classes by doing a mihi and sharing aspects of my life. In return, I ask students to share with me, individually, their mihi, and just one slide about their life, using images. This is done in conjunction with a student profile sheet. This allows students to tell me, in confidence, about themselves and how they feel about taking this class, and answer some questions about their learning experiences. Of course, I do this to build connections between us – it’s about creating a space where they feel comfortable and are able to share themselves.

Rashida Longley eFellows blog image 1

 

As I gathered student voice for my research, I realised that I was not creating a space where students could ‘be themselves’. What I was doing was creating a sense of safety in MY space. I was still very much controlling the space.  My own culture was the dominating culture and, alongside a colonial education system and curriculum, did this inhibit a true sense of belonging? I think so, and I still have a lot of work to do to allow students to be themselves. 

From my research, it was clear how important identity and belonging on your own terms are to students.

‘In class, there is usually one one point of reference and that is the Pākeha perspective and that can lead to feelings of exclusion for students who have not been brought up in a Pākeha world’

‘When people are talking, I can just say “this is my experience”. Yeah. And I don't have to filter out the culture’

There are two things we need to think about, the firstly how do we turn teacher practices around to be more inclusive. 

The second is about how we can then create a space where students can be themselves? 

My thinking has now turned from inviting students into my safe space towards answering the question ‘how can I create a space where students (and teachers) can be themselves?’ What does this look like in the classroom? In my practice? What does this language sound like?

Recognising the power of the dominant culture

The first thing we need to stop doing is making assumptions that just because we live in a country where European culture is dominant, that all students are familiar with it. In one interview, the following comment from one of the students really resonated with me.

‘Teachers will often make reference to pākeha popular culture “you will all have heard this song, your grandparents will have played it……” this immediately disconnects you from the class if you have not grown up in this culture or country’

I have experienced this feeling. I still experience it. It does not just happen in the classroom; it happens in many, many aspects of my  life, including in my social life when talking to people about music, TV and films and food. 

Yet, I was still guilty of this within my teaching – teaching through the dominant culture. 

Something that I will now do is to use the REAL influences in my life. My childhood landmarks are connected to my own British Ugandan Indian cultural references (yes, mostly Bollywood) music, films, actors and singers but also ood and festivals. In this way I can find connection not through common experience but through modelling respect for authentic and unique experience.

One way in which we can easily change is to re-think our language, this would make a big difference.

Depending on the purpose, this can be rephrased:

‘This is a song from MY childhood, MY grandparents played it”

‘Think of a song you have heard throughout your childhood’

(get students to play it, share it)

There are no assumptions being made about knowledge or culture here – but what it will do is allow students to share openly. 

There are many examples that will come to mind about how we can make small, simple changes in order to co-construct safe places for our culturally diverse learners. Another example that comes to mind in my teaching is when I teach Organic Chemistry. I will consciously draw attention to more indigenous medicine from a variety of cultures to look at the chemical composition of the active ingredients.  

My challenge to you is to reflect on your current practice and think about how you can make small changes so that all your students feel that they truly can be themselves in your classroom. I believe that these small changes will make all the difference to your students and their sense of belonging. 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
read more
Posted in
Group of people standing in classroom

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable

Posted on by

I am Māori. I whakapapa Māori, therefore, I am Māori. Although I am visibly white, my own upbringing follows the same as many Māori. My Nana was Māori but she hated it. She distanced herself as far as she could from te ao Māori, her iwi, her hapū, her whānau. She faced battles that she would never talk about and became disconnected. I was, therefore, disconnected from birth. 

When I began my own journey at high school to attempt to reconnect, I was judged harshly for it. I faced a barrage of comments like, “You’re too intelligent to take te reo.” and “You don’t look Māori, why would you choose it as a subject?” These negative comments displayed the racism that was evident in both my community as well as in the education system but I only truly see this in hindsight; the hindsight I have as I try to walk with a foot in both worlds. I accept and acknowledge my white privilege while I fight to bring about equity in education. The deficit thinking that te reo Māori is a lesser subject and that Māori learners are lesser than Pākehā learners was evident then and still is today.

For the eFellowship I completed with CORE Education in 2021, I worked on the proposition of a Year 10 Māori whānau class. This was something quite different for the traditional co-ed school I worked in, especially when only 14% of the 1200 ākonga at the school and five of the 85 teaching staff were Māori. I developed a plan with three main aspects that I hoped would produce significant change in equitable teaching and learning. These were: 

  • cross-curricular learning through authentic learning experiences, 
  • embedding Te Ao Māori in the learning, and 
  • Creating a whānau environment. 

By creating a class of ākonga Māori, I believed a barrier to Māori success would be automatically removed as there was no opportunity for “unconscious bias” within the class. Whānau and ākonga would be invited to decide on the learning they wanted from the kaiako at the start of the year. Those decisions would be integrated across the four subject areas of English, Social Studies, Science and Mathematics and would be the basis of project-based learning. As kaiako, we would facilitate and identify the learning that was occurring naturally based on a belief that this approach should lead to a greater understanding of the learning by the students as well as its application. 

Sarah Lassen eFellows blog image

The quantitative and qualitative results spoke for themselves. Ākonga improved across the board in test results with the majority making a larger leap than their Pākehā counterparts. They also grew in confidence as learners and articulated this clearly. However, that “unconscious bias” that I believed would be removed was not. It was gone between the kaiako of the class and the ākonga but the wider school was a different story. 

The kaiako and ākonga of this class dealt with racism from a variety of sources and in a multitude of ways throughout the year. Relievers of the class would say inappropriate and racist things. One example of this was when a particular relief teacher asked the two “whitest” students in the class, “Why are you with this lot?” Another example was when a different reliever said to the class, “Is this why you wee Māoris can’t get along with anyone else? They keep you all together.” 

This blatant racism was, as you can imagine, not taken lightly by ākonga and they fought back as they knew how. They yelled, they left the room and they hid the relief teacher’s keys. Although their responses to these acts were not behaviourally acceptable, the pastoral team did not care about the why. The assumption that, due to previous pastoral records, our ākonga Māori just behave badly meant that discipline instead of understanding was the go to. Kaiako of the class were expected to manage every aspect of their students’ school lives by the pastoral team unlike what would ever be expected of any other classroom class teacher. 

Other staff members would make racist comments about the class to these kaiako and challenge why we would want to teach them as a whole. One of the kaiako even said that she felt, “like my skin colour has changed.” SLT approved the class going ahead but would not hear about the racism being faced and showed no support of the class. In fact, one student from the class had a verbal altercation with a staff member and was removed to alternative education without the normal processes being followed, those that any Pākehā student would have gone through. We, as kaiako of this class, all were able to acknowledge our white privilege from this experience with one teacher stating that she, “could not believe how blind she had been to what our ākonga Māori go through.”

What I have learnt from this experience is the importance of being actively anti racist. Our actions can not only give our ākonga confidence in us but they can bring about change. Change that is desperately needed in this country, in our education system. Below I have compiled a list of some of the things I learnt to do throughout the eFellowship and my action research project.

  1. Teach our history accurately – we must acknowledge the voices and experiences of Māori in our history and teach these. This may mean unlearning what we, ourselves, know and have learnt but it is vital in order to make change. Have students think critically about the voices that are heard and how we can include those that are often missed out. Ka mua, ka muri.
  2. Understand and explain that everyone is capable of racism, not just ‘bad’ people – if we continue to buy into the idea that only ‘bad’ people are racist, we are denying the ‘good’ people the chance to examine their own actions and thoughts and how these support and sustain the racial hierarchy in society.
  3. Acknowledge the harm that is caused by racism in all its forms – ākonga need to feel heard when it comes to the pain they experience due to both overt and covert racism. The impact of racism on a person is not lessened because someone did not intend to be racist.
  4. Do not be silent and encourage others to speak out – being silent when you observe racist behaviour is being complicit.
  5. Understand and acknowledge that every person’s experience with racism can be different.
  6. Be aware of the racial trauma of ākonga – we must support those who have been traumatised by racism, not just challenge those who instigate it. The system and the people within it largely benefit from white privilege which does not allow for the recognition of the generational trauma that has been felt by Māori in education. Be sensitive.
  7. Model the behaviour you expect in your classroom – be inclusive and demonstrate what this looks like. All ākonga should feel valued and safe in the spaces we create.
  8. Change should be the aim – blame and shame is not helpful so we must focus on how we can make and be the change we want to see.

Sarah Lassen eFellows blog image 2

We must be prepared to have difficult conversations. We must be prepared to learn, unlearn and relearn. We must be prepared to be uncomfortable. For our ākonga, we must be better.

You can read Sarah Lassen's 2021 eFellow's report here. 

read more
Posted in