Walking Stories of Te Hiku TOD

First day of term 2 and the teachers in the Te Hiku Kahui Ako had a teacher only day. A first for our schools in the Far North, a ground breaking day for our students and teachers. The first hui lead by our iwi in Te Hiku for all schools. We had a  powhiri onto the Te Rangi Aniwaniwa kura by their students and kaiako. The first key note speaker was by Anahera Herbert Graves talking about the history of Te Tiriti and the Ngapuhi. The next speaker was Shane Jones who I have heard talk many times and new we would enjoy it. He is such a good story teller, with great history and humour. He told the story of Te Kāinga Ngāi Takoto the land we where on. We then had break out sessions run by the different iwi Te Aupouri, Ngāti Kuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Takoto. We heard the stories of each of the iwi. Then we had the Iwi panel answering questions.

This was a great day to have everyone together hearing the stories from all the iwi. We heard a lot of the what they want us as teachers to tell the students in the classrooms and the why, the only thing that is missing is the how and the resources to support the what? Who are the experts in our iwi, the story tellers the come in and correctly tell the stories. We need more books, songs, videos, podcasts for teachers to tell the stories. So our students can learn who they are and where they come from. They can learn their Whakapapa and about their turangawaewae. So they can locate themselves and where they belong, how they got here. The significance of their iwi stories is vital to understand who you are.

This was a fantastic start to the histories of Te Hiku, the stories of significance and connecting our tamariki. Faces where put to names and great people with amazing talents where show cased. I am looking forward to the follow up workshops, resources and Teacher Only days that will develop out of this.

Digital Fluency Intensive Coach term 1

I was lucky enough to be a coach for the online Digital Fluency Intensive for term 1. I managed to change my timetable to fit all my teachers in over 4 days. For the full 9 weeks I was a coach and had a bubble group of teachers I supported and guided and got to build a great relationship with over the 9 weeks. I had a mixture of male and female primary and secondary teachers with a varried level of knowledge of Google apps and Manaiakalani kaupapa. I pushed myself to take some of the sessions for the whole of DFI participants this was great to keep me upto date with all the changes and upgrades. Also the challenge to keep to the time limits. This took some practice as it is so easy to go over time and also a challenge to not rush and talk to fast. Our leader Vicki is so professional to work with and encourages and supports us to take sessions and offers time to go over the workshops if we need. Having the reflection time as facilitators after each day is great to disscuss, change and follow up emails to teachers or facilitators working in the schools to follow up. The feed back was great to read and nice to have some specific to myself "I loved my bubble group. I felt very fortunate to have a group of teachers that had a mix of genders (we have no male teachers at our kura), spread across Aotearoa, spread across year levels/experience. It was SO interesting to hear the experiences of everyday teaching life in all these different environments and Donna was an amazing facilitator that was able to share her knowledge of how Manaiakalani DFI might help us meet some of our personalised challenges/goals/expectations for learners." "Donna was an amazing bubble leader. Was always helping and finding ways to create good and thought provoking discussion." Next term I am able to be a coach again and am looking forward to my next bubble group and pushing myself more and taking some of the workshops I am not confident with to learn and extend myself. I feel confident to do this with such great facilitators and Vicki that will jump in an help at anytime.