A Cultural Journey

At St Joseph’s, Papanui, we are continuing on a journey of being more culturally responsive. It’s my pleasure and privilege to support the staff at St Joseph’s with this, and I couldn’t do it without the support of the kahui, which has part-funded some study at UC. This has given me the confidence to make resources for our kura and support teachers with ideas and language.

We now have a school slideshow with karakia and waiata that kaiako can use with their tamariki. There are also some units to support teaching simple reo Māori, and I’ve bought resources to support this. Staff have been keen to learn, and many attended an optional reo Māori workshop I had to complete as an assignment for university. I was so impressed with their enthusiasm and commitment to turn up to an online session in week 9 of Term 1! All the reo Māori I covered is now in a Google Classroom for teachers, with videos and resources to support their learning.

Kaiako are also encouraged to include Māori stories and ideas within learning areas. Kaitiakitanga (guardianship), native birds and an art unit based on Māori pūrakau (stories) are among the themes that have been planned. The resources created and shared by the East hub are amazing taonga that support us as well. We also have a fabulous librarian at St Jo’s, who has been buying beautiful books with Māori contexts and language for our library.

We know we’ve got a long road ahead, but every small step is important.

Pai tū, pai hinga, nāwai rā ki oti.

Good to stand, good to fall, continue on, and eventually the work is completed.