Activity 3 –

I will be using Rolfe’s Model of Reflection (Otago Polytechnic, n.d.) to delve deeper into my understanding of Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness in the classroom context.

What?

Since I have only been teaching for a year, I am quite fresh out of University. I thought that I was a culturally responsive teacher. I thought that I was going to incorporate all backgrounds and cultures into my planning and really make students feel like they belong – and I do try, I try bring their language into everyday use in the classroom, I let them share their experiences and connections that make them who they are. But I feel like there is so much more that I could be doing to allow them to feel like they are valued for who they are and where they come from. This will come with time, with learning who they are and with the whanaungatanga in the classroom, but it will also take explicit digging from me.

I understand culturally responsive practice to be made up of many components, all that need to be facilitated by the teacher to create a rich and engaging classroom where students feel as though they belong. Tataiako (2011) relays five important points of creating an inclusive and diverse classroom culture for Māori.  The first point being ako, that the teacher needs to take responsibility for their own learning and that of their students.  Wananga is having robust dialogue for the benefit of Māori learner’s achievement. Manaakitanga is the sharing of the values and beliefs upheld by the Māori culture, whanaungatanga actively engages in respectful working relationships and tangata whenua affirms Māori learners as Māori.  By showing students and whānau that I value and practice these concepts I am showing that I have knowledge of tikanga Māori and that I can work effectively in the bicultural contexts of Aotearoa.

So What?

I feel like the way my action plan is going at the moment, it is headed for failure. I think it is really important to have insight and knowledge around your community before the process has even started (as modelled in the spiral inquiry). It is a critical part in implementing a successful inquiry. However I changed schools, so my plan was centred around my year 2 class – not a year 8 class, at a different school, with different challenges, and different needs. As I mentioned above, I don’t feel that I know my communities yet, I am still learning about what they like to do in their spare time let alone how they learn as learners, and how they feel valued as learners. As as teacher, it is important to encourage diverse students to be themselves and to create a classroom that reflects the students as individuals. This is solidified in the Statistics NZ (2010) report that states, “Student achievement is affected by the degree to which a student’s culture is respected by the school, and by the degree of similarity between the culture of the community and the values of the school.”

Now What?

Even though it is not in my action plan, I feel like the next few weeks I need to focus on finding out what it means to be culturally responsive, to make them feel like they can be successful as Maori, or Pasifika, or as Colombian in two of the cases in my class. I want their ideas and beliefs to be valued in the classroom, and I think that is critical before I start to critique them on a system that has been against them from the start.

Reflective teachers are always adapting their programme to cater to the students, Te Kohitanga discusses the importance of differentiated learning and ways that I can manipulate my learning environment to ensure that learning styles and levels of competency are met. I will start by using this as a base to guide me into finding out more about my students cultures and beliefs.

References:

New Zealand Ministry of Education. (2011). Tataiako. Wellington: Learning Media.

Otago Polytechnic. (n.d.). Reflective Writing. Retrieved from https://www.op.ac.nz/assets/LearningAdvice/Reflective-writing.pdf

Statistics New Zealand and Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs (2010). Education and Pacific Peoples in New Zealand. Wellington: Author.