A big question...but perhaps with an easy, entry level answer?
Believe in the kids (get rid of the deficit thinking), believe in your actions (agentic teachers) and care for your students as people.
Unpacking what Bishop (2012) is getting at...he wants for teachers to care deeply, and genuinely for the students that come through the gates, and to have high hopes, dreams, and expectations for them without letting backgrounds get in the way. To truly believe that as teacher I can create conditions, and facilitate powerful learning that will help make the difference for that child.
Easy to write, easy to believe, harder to put into practice....but should it be?
As a teacher, as a leader, and as a school we have struggled with this across the years. Don't get me wrong, we do many awesome things for our Māori students, but have often grappled with the meaningful vs tokenism debate. Are we doing this to celebrate and grow a culture, or to tick a box for somebody? This has led at times to slow change, and actions not being valued...no matter their ease of implementation (eg daily karakia). This area is still a work in progress.
I was intrigued this week by the Mauri Model of self-reflection, a simple and powerful tool. Using the concept of Mauri, a life force, we can see how 'alive' an idea, a concept or an action is in our practice. Pohatu (2011) used these descriptions of Mauri:
Mauri Moe has two levels: first level is inactive state which can be thought of as “being dead” and the second level is proactive potential which can be described as “sleep” state.
Mauri Oho is the state of being proactive, being awaken from the Mauri Moe.
Mauri Ora is the state of being actively engaged.
Our Vision, Mission and Values
Last year staff, students and whanau inputted and created our new graduate profile, the DPS Kid. This Kid embodies all that we want for our learners...academically, behaviourally, environmentally and culturally. Interestingly when we asked our community what they wanted for their kids they overwhelming wanted us to help foster great kids, nice citizens, kids who felt safe to be themselves, risk-takers, and just to be happy at school. This ties in so well with what Bishop asks of us as a profession, to know and care for the kids. We used our 5 PRIDE values as a base for this DPS Kid, using the Māori words for them (again, the token debate...) and using a whakatauki to bring a richness to each value. This cultural story that the whakatauki bring was missing before, and is such a simple powerful thing to have done. Our aim over time is to have the children be able to use the English, Māori and whakatauki interchangeably when discussing themselves as a person.
I think for this area of the school we are operating at Mauri Oho as we are making a start, making deliberate choices to bring the culture to the fore within the school. The shift to Mauri Ora will be harder, and I see this as being when the DPS kid has been normalised, along with all the concepts and language attached to it.
Decisions, Decisions
Do we as a school make culturally responsive decisions? Again, a question that has an 'easy to write' answer, but a challenge to bring to reality.
Over the last 5 years our school has become much more strategic, and focussed in our planning...through the charter and annual plan. While not totally rigid, they have meant that once on a path we have tended to stick with it. As we are making these big decisions for the following 12 months we aren't asking ourselves questions about culture, about values, and about how we could be doing things 'differently' (as ERO put it). We ask each other questions about learning, and learners, without considering their stories, without looking further than what the data is telling us. We are making a beginning with this though, with this years annual plan target around Māori achievement, and annual goals around developing a more culturally responsive way of working. As a Leaders team we are looking and learning, two members now a part of a culturally responsive cluster, and we have reframed our 'target' children into 'focus learners', part of the change being to know them before we teach them.
I think we are Mauri Moe, but perhaps the second level. On the way, starting on a good track...but far from proactive yet.
References
A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. (2017, July 01). Retrieved July 01, 2017, from https://vimeo.com/49992994bishop vid
Raising Achievement in Primary Schools (2014), Education Review Office
