White Noise -He tangata takahi manuhiri, he marae puehu.

When I think of Indigenous knowledge I relate this idea to the link that the Tangata Whenua have with the whenua this cultural responsiveness is how we seek to respond to this knowledge and connect it to new learning in the classroom. The two areas I wish to focus on in this blog is how I have developed learning activities in the classroom in a culturally responsive way and how school-wide activities have taken into account cultural responsiveness. This will be done using Rolfe's model of reflection.

So what can I say about these areas in my practice? If I look at my development of learning activities specifically in my maths class I can see that it certainly needs a lot of work. We spend a large amount of time looking at Geometry in our year 9 class and this is often where we try and place some culturally responsive learning. In the portfolio, we ask students to produce a culturally significant design. Unfortunately, I believe this in Milnes action continuum can only be as lip service or a box-ticking activity. This can be seen along with a lot of the other times in Maths where a Māori or Pasifika name is thrown on top of a maths question to make it seem culturally responsive. This would be different from my participation in the school-wide activity of the house haka competition and using the Mauri model to evaluate my practice here I would recognise my approach as Mauri ora or active in my approach to this activity.

What next? Well looking at my approach to the school-wide activity how could I develop more of this approach in my development of resources? Let us think about what went well in the haka competition. Firstly I put myself in the place of a learner and I spent a lot of time ensuring I learnt the movements, this included talking to students and teachers about both the words and the movements. I ensured that I was at every practice and willingly took part not leading but learning from the students. As they were doing the female version I also met with male teachers and spent time during lunch practising as well as doing the same at home. This could be seen as ako the idea of learning together and from each other. I acknowledged the indigenous knowledge of the students around me. With the Maths resources looking at Geometry I didn’t break down this wall and engage with the student's cultural knowledge in the class. Despite well knowing that carving and imagery have an important place in Māori and Pasifika culture I never engaged in sharing these ideas. Simply bringing in some stencils of Māori “patterns” does not show cultural responsiveness. How could I of further embrace this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the Indigenous knowledge that we are surrounded by in Ōtepoti? I could have asked students to bring in culturally significant patterns. Possibly I could have looked to local Iwi and found significant stories to share and looked at the visual storytelling of the past and the value it brought to the Tangata whenua. Either way, it was another lost opportunity and a failure to fill the white voids that fill our Education. He tangata takahi manuhiri, he marae puehu.

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/links/related-information/what-is-local-and-indigenous-knowledge/

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_c/mod11.html

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https://pixabay.com/en/ripped-paper-torn-through-broken-2034950/

https://youtu.be/zO5JCrfiYFI (credit to Chris Richards and OGHS)