[MUSIC] >> Hello, welcome to this panel discussion on assessment. We've chosen today to look especially at Maori teacher and student perspectives as part of our approach to minority views of educational assessment testing, reporting, and feedback. It's a stormy, windy, rainy day here in Auckland, so there's some background noise, we hope that you can put up with it. In the meantime, we're going to ask these three Maori teachers to introduce themselves and we'll kick off with a discussion on how Maori education has changed since these women were students themselves. Please introduce yourself. >> Kia ora, hello, I'm Kikee Daniels, I have been teaching for 25 years here in New Zealand. I currently teach at Papatoetoe South here in Auckland. It is an English Medium School, of around 500 students and I teach in a special character class which is Maori language and English language and caters for children that are from year zero, which are five year olds, up to year seven-- sorry, year three, which is seven year old students. Kia ora. >> Kia ora. >> Kia ora, my name is Davika Wilson, I'm a resource teacher of Maori medium. My job is to support Maori teachers within Maori medium schools to develop programs. My school that I'm based at is Kereru Park Campus, in Auckland. And I support teachers within years one to eight, which is children around about the age of five to twelve. >> Kia ora greetings, my name is Rose Keegan. I teach at Newton Central School in Auckland, here in New Zealand. I teach year three which is seven and eight year olds to year six which are nine to ten year olds. I teach in a bilingual unit that comes with Maori and English languages run through the day. And I've been teaching for nearly 20 years now. >> Ladies, without giving away your ages, how has schooling changed for Maori children since you were at school? >> Okay, for myself, when I went to school there was no option of Maori medium, Maori language classes. There was only - in the community I lived with - there was only English language speaking classes. There was only English language speaking preschool also. And to speak Maori in the classroom correctly, if you pronounced a word correctly, it was not necessarily seen as an advantage. So, as a student I never heard Maori pronounced correctly. My name was never pronounced correctly. And I do not ever recall a learning experience that had Maori related traditional practices like preparing food, going to our marae or our family land. >> Mm-hm. >> Most of our learning activities would have a western cultural topic around it. >> Okay, so your teachers weren't even Maori. >> I had one Maori teacher when I was five years old and everyone knew because he was brown. But that was the only time, when I was five when I started school. >> All the way through, to the end of high school. >> The only time I would have been able to see a Maori teacher is if I took Maori as a language, as a subject in senior school, in high school, which I decided not to do at the time. >> Okay, so now Maori kids can go to school with Maori teachers, study Maori things in a Maori way, in Maori language. >> Yes, but not every school provides that. There's a selection of schools because the governance body of a school has makes the decision of whether they will introduce that into the school environment. But there is a lot more opportunities, yes, and schools advertise it. >> Any other differences? >> I grew up in a Maori community. And based on family and togetherness values, and also Christian values. >> Mm-hm. >> So, we had Maori throughout the school. It was at the edge of the native school education in those times. And quite disciplined and in terms of how students tend to address their learning, address their teachers. There was corporal punishment in those days and that affected us generally. But we were generally well behaved as fairly young children. However, their teachers respected that we had Maori values, we were a community of Maori people. And they provided a curriculum that was based on government curricula at the time and we were allowed to explore and discover-- in fact we had to discover who we were as Maori children, first in our values and our stories and our narratives, et cetera, and then we merged that with the curriculum. At times, children of those days couldn't relate to the curriculum, particularly in English, because it wasn't spoken much in the home, in terms of grammar and correct pronunciation. However, we linked together in a group to understand and the community helped each other. Changes have been vast in terms of technology. In terms of closeness of those days, the community partnership. It was great. We see a sprinkling of it now as I teach these limited community time, kind of values. We have different schools providing those values today of together and sharing learning of languages, et cetera. So, that's probably one of the biggest differences I've seen. >> So, it sounds like you both had, almost, contradictory or opposite experiences of schooling. Rose, yours was in a rural area. Were you also in a rural area, or a city area? >> I was in city area in the north. >> Okay. >> Yeah well-- Whangarei was considered a city. >> Yes, a small town by most people's standards. So, in terms of, are there still schools like you describe Rose, or are most schools now urbanised and most Maori students in city areas? >> As I've traveled around the east coast areas of New Zealand where I grew up, many have turned to forms of technology to help them integrate and understand the curriculum. I still see values of community and I still see kinship or togetherness. But, I would say that there's a contrast between the two areas - of rural New Zealand and the city urban area where I am now. >> But the majority of Maori students are in urban areas today? >> Generally, exodus, I suppose, into cities to learn further or to develop. >> Yeah. >> I think there's greater access to Maori medium schools than there were in the past. >> Mm-hm. >> Within the area that I stay, there are probably four different Maori medium options for parents to take. Whereas that's what I would say when I was growing up, my parents were, you know, part of the era where their parents didn't want them to learn any Maori, they didn't, so we didn't. And so, now that I've grown up in-- you know, we've sort of had a change into the government. And communities are accepting that children need to be immersed in their culture and language. >> Mm-hm. >> You know, more communities are saying, "Hey, we need one." So, they put up Maori units or schools are-- >> They're responding. They are driven by the parents. Often, what I'm experiencing, what I'm seeing, is that it's not necessarily the school leaders or the principal that is promoting the option, that it's the communities coming in and working together and forcing the issue to say that "We do exist in this community and we need to be catered for." And the school's have the opportunity and they can offer that option. >> That's a significant change in government policy from being top-down, centrally-driven to a much more community based population driving decisions about how schools should be run. >> So, what I've noticed from when I was at school, my parents were told - and I've been told this, and they have vivid memories of it - they were told, only English. You only speak English. Your children are not intelligent enough to speak two languages, and they will not progress unless English is the language, that's what our family experienced. Whereas now as a teacher, through the years that I've been teaching, when parents now come into a school and say, "We need our children, we want our children to also speak Te Reo Maori, the Maori language, to not lose who their identity, to be proud of who they are." Schools will now say, "Okay, let's look at this." And they will ask the rest of the community and then look at meeting that need. But a lot of it is driven by numbers. If there's enough people in the community that show support-- that's the current class I'm in now, was totally instigated by the community of that school. The Maori Community. So, now they have 34 students enrolled and it has been running now for two years. >> Great. >> Yeah. >> One of the areas that I find has changed is your real passion to learn. The passion to share with others what you know in learning and teaching. And at the workplace I have right now, there's a passion to teach from your heart. So, that heart word can be shared amongst many people. and encourage them. And they always speak in terms of our community. The central leader in our workplace has an amazing ability to net people together with just her passion for leadership and her passion to see everyone, diverse as they are, encouraged and succeed. And I find that links back to where I was on the east coast of New Zealand and my upbringing to have success and leadership. Again, it stems back to what Kikee is saying over here - my parents were also in that era of you will not speak your Maori language at school because of the education at that time. And they encouraged us to learn English. That was the language and to find everything out about the curriculum. And I never understood that until I stepped out into many schools in New Zealand and found that there's a lot of criticism about who I was as a teacher - "Why are you here? Shouldn't you be in this area because you're the cleaner? Oh, are you the cleaner, in fact?" And I said "No, honey, I'm your son's teacher." But I always said it with grace and heart so that I could always encourage them to understand their view. >> Mm-hm. >> On how they looked at Maori teachers or Maori people within the education sector. And so, where I am now at Newton Central, there's just this passion to share what I know as a Maori person - my values and my culture, my cultural map, my upbringing - so that they can understand how the bilingual trend of learning two languages can occur and how beautiful our language really is. And that's the track I'm on now, this is a great path for me. >> Thank you. I assume most of all three of you have worked in mainstream English speaking schools where there'd be Maori and non-Maori students, how is that different for a Maori student to be a minority in an English speaking school today, compared to being a member of the Maori community in a Maori speaking classroom? >> I found it at times quite political. >> How do you mean? >> I taught at another setting in the country, Wellington, and there are a lot of views about who the teacher should be in the classroom, a lot of stereotypes about whether they're European, or mainly European, and why is there a person who is not European teaching my children. It came a lot from the one child family composition, and you know, I found that quite an interesting aspect to deal with. How did I deal with it? I just said I love teaching, I'm passionate about teaching. I want to see your child succeed, like I have, and go further than I ever did. >> So, you're saying that there's potentially prejudice against the teacher not being Maori. What about for the student who is a Maori student in an English speaking school and in an English speaking class? >> Well, that was me. I was one of those students. And, I'd say you always remember your favorite teacher. And honestly my favorite teacher was not Maori, but she had the behaviors, you know, of Maori people. I think that's the most supportive thing, no matter what culture you're from as a teacher, as long as you look at the child as a whole and, you know, teach them as you would your own. It doesn't really matter. Because I had bad experiences with teachers and most of the time it was because we didn't do anything Maori at all, whereas the favorite teacher that I speak of, she showed us pretty much the world and you know, opened our eyes to other things. I think that the teacher's approach towards the children is what matters the most. >> Okay, so within a Maori context, with a Maori teacher and a Maori language and culture environment, the students will have much better relationships with teachers? >> Sometimes. >> Sometimes, so, it's not an instant-fit perfect solution? >> No, it's not a perfect solution, but oh-- I just lost the thought. What I found for Maori students within an English speaking context, that some students depending on the teacher, or teachers, they are present in the classroom setting but they might not necessarily be noticed, or a lot of generalizations are being made about whether they can achieve or not, or what family or what area of the neighborhood they come from because they're Maori. >> Mm-hm. >> That's what I've witnessed. And I think the teachers that get to know the student for who they are and take time and interest and build the relationships up, which is a part of Maori culture, it's a strong value of ours. >> Yes. >> They've had success. And even myself - I am Maori, I am a Kaikorero, I am a teacher - but I keep myself in check that all my students that come into my class I don't generalise that they all eat Maori food and all enjoy it - for example, kina, which is seafood, in particular, kaimoana. Just to not make generalisations, especially because I teach urban Maori students, that to get to know each student on an individual basis, to get to know their families. And to continue on the learning from there and build from there. [MUSIC]
