I am fortunate that I am able to work alongside a range of different educators in my role as a facilitator. From those in their first year of teaching, all the way across the spectrum to those who have been teaching for far longer than I have been alive. Interestingly, technology is often the great neutraliser. I have worked with vastly experienced teachers with very little confidence and fluency using technology, and with brand new teachers with incredible levels of digital skill. This, in a nutshell, is the nature of leading and supporting teachers. Age and experience doesn’t always have a direct correlation to teaching ability. Effective education leadership is about identifying strengths and weaknesses of a teacher, no matter their experience, and supporting them to grow in whichever way they need.
Covid has come as a crossroads for a lot of teachers. What was possible pre-Covid, or what worked, doesn’t necessarily work anymore. I have found this was particularly the case with those teachers I work with who didn’t use technology much prior to Covid. For teachers who had minimal digital integration to their programmes, the idea of taking their teaching and learning online meant a massive shift in thinking. A lot is possible within the walls of a physical classroom, but when this is suddenly no longer an option, and teaching has to happen differently in order for learning to happen online. That’s was assuming the learners had internet and device access to be able to take part.
Manaiakalani Education Trust is in partnership with more than 120 schools over the country, many of which are low decile schools or in low socio-economic areas. We are constantly looking for ways in which we can help support our whānau with setting their young people up for success. Developed in 2011, our Cybersmart curriculum (Manaiakalani Education Trust, 2011) is a positive alternative to the other Cybersafety and Digital Citizenship curriculums. It was later translated into te reo Māori, establishing the Tū Atamai i te Ipurangi curriculum.
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| Manaiakalani's Cybersmart curriculum |
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| Tū Atamai i te Ipurangi - the te reo Māori Cybersmart curriculum |
A project that I am working on this year is bringing together a group of Samoan and Samoan-speaking educators from across our network to develop resources in Gagana Samoa for use in Samoan Bilingual Units across our network and classes with Samoan-speaking learners. This is in response to the fact that Samoan is the 3rd most commonly spoken language in New Zealand, and we have a Samoan representation across our network. The aim would be that eventually, we would be able to do the same process with other Pasifika languages.
An important part of the Manaiakalani kaupapa is visibility of learning to all stakeholders in a child’s life. Tātaiako and Tapasā are cultural frameworks for supporting the educational achievement of Māori and Pasifika learners in New Zealand schools. The ‘Pasifika Success Compass’ from Tapasā (Ministry of Education, 2018) places “Pasifika learners, parents, families and communities at the centre” of Pasifika achievement and success in learning. Visibility of what the child is learning, through the mode of class websites enables all of these parties to be along for the journey with their child’s learning. All that a family member or other stakeholder needs to do in order to see what their young person is learning is to simply Google search the school’s name and follow the link to the class sites from the website.
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Tapasā - Cultural competencies framework for teachers of Pacific learners
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These two components of Pasifika learners being able to learn in their own language, and having their ‘aiga and those important to them involved with their learning, are culturally intelligent ways of setting Pasifika learners up for success, using the proven principles that are found within Tapasā.
These principles of Tapasā are very similar to those found in Tātaiako (Education Council New Zealand, 2011) when looking at best practice for teaching Māori learners. The core principle of this approach is “Māori learners achieving educational success as Māori”. In order for this to happen, leaders of learning are challenged to foster the competencies of Ako, Whanaungatanga, Tangata Whenuatanga, Manaakitanga and Wānanga within our learning environments.
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| Tātaiako - cultural competencies for teachers of Māori learners |
References
Education Council New Zealand–Matatū Aotearoa. (2011). Tātaiako: Cultural competencies for teachers of Māori learners. Ministry of Education.
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