Ready to Rumble

We need to sit on the rim

of the well of darkness

and fish for fallen light

with patience. (Slow wonder)

I remember stepping out on this journey like a freshly born moose gambling on shaky legs and looking towards my mentors for the support to take my first bounding leaps. Real risk when you dare to be different or brilliant within this educational landscape, opinions and ideas seem to be stared at with disdain. Luckily I was flanked by Mammoths in the world of educational research and they knew what I was doing was just and right.

One colleague said “Oh I never even heard of the fellowship” in a bizarre backhanded compliment, others may have just scoffed behind closed doors so you should be happy to be in a direct rumble if. The odd now and again someone tries to choke slam you during a staff briefing in a public show of glee.

“It wasn’t difficult for me to imagine your meeting. I’ve been in them too. Not exactly like that one, but the same confrontation and the same sense of nowhere to run. Needing to scream, to rumble.” (Gómez and O'Connor #)

While closing my efellowship I challenged myself: “As I look forward I will hopefully build a suitable environment for the ākonga to grow in one that will try and ensure adheres to gender equity.” (Core education, n.d., #) With this in mind I created the Otago High School league and the Otago esports brawl. The Otago esports brawl was an offline event for the local esports teams to compete together in a one day event. Going into its second year I knew I needed to go bigger and ensure that gender equity was at the centre of the mahi.

Introducing the Rangatahi Rumble, through Covid 19 and uncertain time our rangatahi have gone through a lot and social connections are more important than ever. (Julie Radford Poupard February 2021). Though all rangatahi have struggled I felt it important to ensure that wahine and gender queer youth had a place to enjoy esport. The term gender queer was agreed on after initial conversations with Pride Dunedin and then the awesome Inside Out who persistently were supportive of the concept. Alas the Youth Employment success and Firebrand Rangatahi Rumble was born as an event to open the brawl weekend. Incredible things happened around 40 young people appeared to play and support the event. Screams of joy, smiles and competition, just fun. The buzz around the room was tangible and the rangatahi got the joy of their play being live streamed and commentated by the fantastic Dr. Macrin Lipski. Valorant was the title played and this has proved extremely popular in my kura. I have gone to around 20 ākonga who regularly play and sometimes I run out of machines during lunchtime training. I look forward to facilitating competition through term 4 of Valorant and will run the competition on alternative weeks from league of legends.

Saturday Sunday saw teams competing for glory in League of Legends during the Youth Employment Success & Firebrand Otago esports brawl II. For those who do not know the game League of Legends is a 5 on 5 game where players pick from a set of heroes and battle across a digital map. It is highly collaborative, an easy game to start and completely free but difficult to master and a good team needs to have on point communication. These are all skills that we highly value in our rangatahi and the big point is it is fun. It is especially fun when you start to master the intricate nature of the game and develop your play style. Teams from across Otago came along to compete and there were tears of fun and excitement. This the biggest high school tournament saw students in pitched battle for 2 days. The true legends were though as ever the rangatahi. The big question though was where were the teachers? Well thank you to the teachers who did turn up, we could count them on one hand but with 8 different schools all represented in this very new event I would have thought it would have sparked some joy and excitement in some of our educators across the region. Traditional school sports would see crowds of the community come in and have a look but this cutting edge endeavor didn’t attract the same support. I had fielded critiques of; well it isn’t really a spectator sport is it? A critique that seems to completely misunderstand the world that the rangatahi live in.

We now look on to continue to fuel the brawl, in term 4 I am going to march in to a few offices to explain what is and has been happening and continue to grow this environment for the ākonga ensuring we move ahead with equity at the heart of the mahi.

Highlights on the Stream

Day 2 Youth Employment Success Firebrand Otago esports Brawl

Highlights on the Stream:

References

Core education. (n.d.). eSports-Transcending the gender gap Duncan Trickey Otago Girls High School Vince Ham e-Fellow 2020

Gómez, C. R., & O'Connor, P. (2022). Slow Wonder: Letters on Imagination and Education. Cambridge University Press.

Experiences of COVID-19 for takatāpui, queer, gender diverse, and intersex young people

aged 16-24, Julie Radford Poupard February 2021