Batten Team's Change Unit by Nick Grant

This year the Batten Team at Te Kura o Tūpaki / OLA (as well as the other teams) has been learning through the above conceptual understanding. The amalgamation of four local Parishes into “The Catholic Parish of Christchurch South” will see a new church built next to our present school. This subsequent partial rebuild of the school to accommodate the new church has offered us the opportunity to incorporate our own cultural heritage into our rebuild using Māori art and designs, much in the same way that the earthquake rebuilds offered the opportunity for the CCC to incorporate the cultural heritage of the tangata whenua into some of the city’s new buildings. So this is what the Batten Team have chosen to do.

We designed our learning around concentric circles (which were much easier to replicate using a square table in Google Docs!)...

• Me: Looked at the children (photos) when they started school and now. What changes have occurred since then and now, what can they do now they couldn’t do then.  
  

• Family: The children learnt about their own family history by writing their pepeha.
  

• School’s Past: They then learnt what was here at OLA before OLA - swamp, kahikatea forest and the tupaki plant (which is our school’s gifted name). Students’ presented their findings via 3D models, dance, videos or posters.
  
  

• My School’s Future: Started looking at the kowhaiwhai designs and the meanings behind them. We then visited -

  • Tākaro ā poi - Margaret Mahy Playground

  • Hine-Pāka - Bus Exchange

  • Te Omeka - Justice and Emergency Services Precinct

  • Tūranga - Central Library
    
    

Here we investigated our city’s cultural heritage and how concepts are portrayed in Māori art. On this visit, we learnt about the background of the Māori designs incorporated into each building or space. The students’ then brought these concepts back to school and started to create their own designs to reflect our school’s cultural narrative (our past), and recreate them on MDF board (using lino cutters).

These designs will also be scanned and laser-cut into weatherproof wood (courtesy of Art Fetiche at an extremely generous rate, paid for by the PTA) to be displayed around the school. One design will also be sandblasted in the paving between two of the new buildings.

Riki Manuel, koro of four children here at school, has also offered to take the children’s designs, and along with additional consultation with the school community will carve a bigger piece to adorn the school once the rebuild has been completed.