Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua: ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past’

This whakataukī talks about the Māori concept of time with past and present intertwined with the future. The very recent images that NASA have released from the Webb telescope are just jaw droppingly incredible. It is stunning to look at these familiar images revisited. The vastness of space can often impact on your own place and impact on the environment around you and being in midwinter and the Māori New year it is a good time to reflect on our own impacts.

Term two has been bumpy and fun. So much of the mahi from term one starts to come into fruition. In Business studies we are, yes let's do it, into the business end of the programme. Groups form and crumble as rangatahi develop and build on their relating to others skills. Passions and possibilities are realised as well as failures and pivots. It is a pretty massive task to get the ākonga to balance their academics with running a small business. Many of my class further balance this with work sport and all the other trappings of being a young person in Aotearoa. My favourite saying at the moment to the year 12 cohort, who are as funny as they are brilliant, is “Ahh Education stealing childhoods since….”, I really need to find a decent round off for that. Though this is in jest the weary faces that drag themselves into the class at times are heartbreaking and ākonga wellbeing is something that we should take seriously. Though in saying this how much of this can be handled in the classroom without major shifts in practice and school systems.

There are a few things that I do in the classroom to ensure that social wellbeing is catered for. Firstly I start with a karakia at the start of the term this is also coupled with circle time. I think it is important for classes to connect on a social level at the start of a term and I often use this at the end of a term to sum things up. With the senior students I have adopted a hybrid approach to the course setting up the work looking at deadlines and utilising break out spaces. This has served us well in our group work. I will couple this with some fortnightly paragraphing deadlines to ensure the class is getting prepared for their external examinations. Richard Wells in a recent blog talks about the importance of mixing groups and I implemented this well with my year 9 class. With year 10’s I often find this a little more difficult but will look to push this further next term. Making random teams is good but then bonding them through a collective challenge or ice breaker activities. We often forget that many of these students have missed out on many of the social experiences of other groups so we have to engineer these experiences in the classroom. Collaborative students are at the heart of our vision and an essential skill set for the future workforce.

These skills can be seen pronounced in extracurricular activities. Asked what my favourite thing about community volunteering was the other day I did not hesitate to say: “Seeing the growth of people”. It does not matter where I am coaching, I always see this. Managing the Under 15’s rugby team at school and coaching the Under 13’s at Kiakoria rugby club, I just love seeing the rangatahi grow in love of the game and ability. This term has also seen 12 teams competing in the weekly esports tournament I facilitate. My own teams have grown exponentially with a new young captain and masses of year 9 students growing the game. It is hilarious watching these students grow. They are incredible and just love the social aspects of the sport. Just like any other sport it is hard to get them out of the room at the end of the day and the laughter is contagious. Is interesting though the digital divide is even more pronounced at the moment. If a student isolates they are often not able to play.

Talking to Youth Employment Success they explained to me that most of the young people they interact with do not have access to a laptop and are accessing things like Te Kura through a mobile device. There seems to be a generation of ākonga left behind in terms of digital equity. Many no longer have a device as this is one of the first luxuries to go and increasingly in the classroom you have to run a differentiated program. I have luckily got access to some computers that we can use during class. More often than not students have to share devices. This is an issue in the mid digital age digital fluency is an absolute must. Ākonga who are not tech savvy will struggle in tertiary education and often there is not the time to teach these skills at these institutions. Through esports I have seen these skills develop as ākonga get more familiar with the machines they work with. They team up and learn new skills and very quickly learn keyboard shortcuts and such. The learning becomes natural and they push each other on.

Esports is not for everyone though and it is great to have had the opportunity to engage with other communities of learning. The Skateboarding club I organised has seen more ākonga push themselves outside of their comfort zone. Like everything we know about learning, a positive relationship is important for the ākonga to grow with that and a supportive environment the ākonga can really flourish.

Moving forward, how can I further embed this into my practice? Well certainly I am looking forward to using Minecraft education collaboratively in class again and also having the year 10’s work on a cardboard challenge later in the term. My senior students will be continuing their endeavours and I look forward to seeing the fruit of their labours.

Certainly a meandering set of musings this term but a while ago I set myself the challenge of Blogging at least once a term as a matter of reflection and am still enjoying it.