Ann Milne's Blog

Feedback

2012-02-10T08:52:00.000+13:00

I think the biggest question for any speaker is asking yourself if what you said was of any use whatsoever to anyone at all? You always hope so, but often there isn't time for much feedback and the audience is busy listening to the next person - so it was great to come across this detailed response to the presentation at the Community Informatics Conference in Prato, Italy in November last year. Thanks Jocelyn!

Teachers Rock!

2012-01-28T07:18:00.000+13:00

It has been back to school this week for Kia Aroha College staff. We met on Tuesday - not to start our planning for the year - but to share the planning teacher teams had already done in meetings during their holiday break. Over these last few days teams have discussed and refined their planning, down to the finest detail, to make sure our students get the very best learning possible. The amount of work that goes into preparation for the start of the year, and throughout the year as well, is incredible and I am impressed, every time I sit listening in these sessions, with the commitment of our staff.

Yesterday I returned from Waitangi, where 250 principals and teachers from Tai Tokerau spent two days in a conference discussing engaging Maori learners.
The weather outside was stunning, the Waitangi setting was beautiful and historic, yet we were all inside talking about children and learning. I was privileged to be able to contribute. Congratulations to the Aka Tokerau Maori Principals' Association for a wonderful event and for enabling your teachers to participate in such great professsional learning.

It's this type of hard work and dedication that those hell bent on "teacher-bashing" and denigrating the work we are doing in our schools don't understand. The only sour note in the Tai Tokerau conference was a Ministry speaker losing her cool when faced with legitimate questions about policy. Her reaction treated us all, education professionals, as naughty children. The very tense relationship that has developed between principals and the Ministry could possibly be improved if the Ministry was prepared to visit the chalk-face and sit in on the wonderful work our teachers do and, God forbid, listen occasionally! Being righteous, does not make you right!

Colouring in the White Spaces

2012-01-17T18:56:00.000+13:00

These holidays have been long-awaited writing time for me - finally proof-reading, editing and updating the doctoral thesis that has taken on a life of its own, and has certainly taken over mine! What started its journey four years ago as an exploration of how Maori and Pasifika children could develop cultural identity in our mainstream schools, turned into how can they reclaim cultural identity and educational sovereignty that should already be available, but isn't, in our Eurocentric education system. Colouring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools, tells the story of the journey of Te Whanau o Tupuranga, Clover Park Middle School and Kia Aroha College to change that situation in our community. It is finally in one document and ready for final (hopefully) feedback. Part of the draft abstract reads:

If we look at a child’s colouring book, before it has any colour added to it, we think of the page as blank. It’s actually not blank, it’s white. That white background is just “there” and we don’t think much about it. Not only is the background uniformly white, the lines are already in place and they dictate where the colour is allowed to go. When children are young, they don’t care where they put the colours, but as they get older they colour in more and more cautiously. They learn about the place of colour and the importance of staying within the pre-determined boundaries and expectations. This thesis argues that this is the setting for our mainstream, or what I have called, whitestream New Zealand schools — that white background is the norm. When we talk about multiculturalism and diversity what we are really referring to is the colour of the children, or their difference from that white norm, and how they don’t fit perfectly inside our lines. If the colour of the space doesn’t change schools are still in the business of assimilation, relegating non-white children to the margins, no matter how many school reform initiatives, new curricula, strategic plans, or mandated standards we implement. What the schools in this study have tried to do is change the colour of the space – so that the space fits the children and they don’t have to constantly adjust to fit in.

New Zealand’s education system has been largely silent on the topic of whiteness and the Eurocentric nature of our schooling policy and practice. However, when I talk to senior Māori and Pasifika "warrior-scholars” in Te Whānau o Tupuranga and Clover Park Middle School about “white spaces” they have encountered in their schooling experience they can identify them all too easily. “White spaces,” they explain, are anything you accept as “normal” for Māori – when it’s really not, any situation that prevents, or works against you “being Māori” or who you are, and that requires you to “be” someone else and leave your beliefs behind. White spaces are spaces that allow you to require less of yourself and that reinforce stereotypes and negative ideas about Māori. Most telling of all was the comment from a Māori student that goes straight to the root of the problem, “White spaces are everywhere,” she said, “even in your head.”

Celebration Day Speech 2011 (the celebration!)

2011-12-09T16:25:00.000+13:00

Last week we enjoyed our Year 13 Graduation Dinner and I listened as these young people talked about their plans for next year – university study - to become a teacher, to study media and politics, communications, graphics and digital design, early childhood education, and automotive and vehicle technology – and all with the achievement levels they need to be accepted for these courses.
I was impressed as always by these “Warrior-Scholars”. I am also impressed by all of our teachers who nurture them through their younger year levels and develop in them, the motivation to stay at school right through to the end of Year 13 - for the first time, many tell us, in their whanau’s experience.

We say good bye to these senior students today and we wish you all the best in your journey beyond school, where we know you will continue to make us very proud of you.

I also see our young people take the stage in Kapa Haka and Pasifika performing arts, speech contests, speak their own languages, welcome visitors to our marae, do the dishes, serve the kai, and look after those who visit our school, and I see how strong they are in their cultural knowledge and values. Knowing who they are and being proud of that is an even greater achievement than any academic success – and what is special about Kia Aroha College is that we think our young people have the absolute right to both.

So I want to thank all our staff, teachers, support and office staff who work so hard every day in support of our kids. My thanks to our Board of Trustees for their strength and support. Thank you also to our parents and families, for your support of Kia Aroha College and the very special character and philosophy of our school.

Finally my congratulations to all of our young people who we will honour and celebrate today.

Celebration Day Speech 2011 (the issues!)

2011-12-09T16:13:00.000+13:00

Usually at this time of year principals stand up at prizegivings and talk about their school’s achievements – and there will be plenty of those celebrated today. But this year I can’t help commenting instead on what is happening outside our school – so it’s great to see our Member of Parliament, Jamie-Lee Ross here today to hear what I have to say
. While we might not have had much change in 2011, unfortunately we can’t say the same for our wider education system where it seems to me that change is out of control. With the completely out of the blue agreement this week between John Key and John Banks to trial charter schools in South Auckland – it’s about to get much worse. You will notice of course we are not trialling these schools on the kids in their electorates! Just ours!

The extreme pressure from the Ministry of Education on students, teachers, principals and boards in schools like ours that have resisted the introduction of policies such as National Standards - because we know they have failed everywhere else in the world – has been the worst I have known in my forty years in education – and many of you know I’ve been in some big fights with education policy and officials.

These changes treat children as consumers, schools as businesses, and learning as pass rates and percentages – and I am extremely proud of our board and community’s courage in standing up against these major – and seriously flawed - changes.

Like other schools across the country who have also stood up against these policies, we will be forced to give in under this pressure and comply, but the important lesson for our young people is that we make our voices heard and we stand up and speak out when things are not right – especially when they damage our children.

All of us who are parents know our children don’t walk or talk at the same age but we give them time and we praise every effort as a huge success – and eventually they learn, at their own pace. When we expect children to all achieve the same standards at the same age and, when we label their efforts as failures when they don’t, that flies in the face of every truth we know about how children learn.

What on earth is Community Informatics?

2011-12-03T10:02:00.000+13:00

Community Informatics is an emerging field of investigation and practice concerned with using information and communications technology to enable and empower communities. However, until recently community informatics has been more about research at an academic level rather than in communities themselves. From a Māori perspective, Robyn Kamira (2003) observes that “technology still happens "at" Māori,” and she discusses the danger that information technology becomes a further instrument of colonisation when the knowledge is controlled by the dominant culture and when the technology makes the extraction and exploitation of knowledge more sophisticated and covert.

That thinking is behind the development of the Te Rongo Haeata Centre for Community Informatics Research, a joint venture between Clubhouse 274, Kia Aroha College, and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.
The Te Rongo Haeata Centre sits within the Tokorau Institute for Indigenous Innovation based at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. The purpose of the Tokorau Institute is to unlock the potential of indigenous people, their knowledge and their resources, by connecting indigenous or traditional knowledge systems with new, advanced and emerging information and communication technologies. The Te Rongo Haeata Centre is ideally placed therefore to align Community Informatics with an indigenous research paradigm, and to explore the impact of Clubhouse 274 on our young people, their whānau, and the wider community.

Last month, Mike Usmar, (CEO of the NZ Computer Clubhouse Trust) and I attended the international CIRN (Community Informatics Research Network) Conference at the Monash Centre, in Prato, Italy, where the conference theme was “To measure or not to measure? That is the question.” We presented a paper that made the point, “To measure or not to measure? How is the question!”

Thriving as Whānau!

2011-08-25T09:05:00.000+12:00

Yesterday was a great day! We were privileged to welcom back into the school this newly released research report, Thriving in Practice, (O’Sullivan, 2011) from the Families Commission, who looked for cases of “exemplary organisations that put ‘families whānau’ priorities and motivations at the centre of their practice.” Huia spent two years being part of every aspect of our school life. Our senior students told her:

We’re about whānau
Whether it’s your whānau kura
Or your whānau at home
Your up-north whānau
Or the whānau you never met
When you’re together, that’s whānau
That’s the connection

I leave my house walk down the road
And I’m home again.

That’s achievement as far as I’m concerned! However, it wasn’t enough for Year 13 student, Ivory. when the researcher and writer came to school to feed back the draft poem to the students. Having read through the draft poem the day before, Ivory was ready with carefully thought out notes that told the researchers they hadn’t gone far enough and she wanted to add another verse. To their credit, they wrote down every word and returned it to us that afternoon, with every one of Ivory’s points included in the final verse.

Looking to the future
We will know who we are as Mäori
We will identify ourselves as Warrior Scholars
We will be articulate thinkers speakers activists
We will take ownership of our physical and spiritual wellbeing
We will make decisions about what feels okay for us
We will demonstrate a strong work ethic
We will go on to achieve
When we leave school
Our future pathway will be clear
We will have left our mark on Te Whänau o Tupuranga
And the door will be open for our return
At this place of learning
Commitment to the kaupapa is everything
Tüturu ki te Kaupapa!

Whose Standards?

2011-07-10T14:52:00.000+12:00

Congratulations to the Auckland Primary Principals' Association on their recommendation that its members cease to attend any training around the implementation of the National Standards. APPA believes that the government's National Standards policy is irreconcilably flawed, confused and unworkable. The standards are not in fact standards and therefore cannot be moderated to provide valid, reliable and consistent achievement data.

On 2 July, 500 principals at the New Zealand Principals' Federation conference in Queenstown added their voices, sending a clear message to the Minister via three remits declaring they believe the National Standards will not deliver intended outcomes, they want a complete and urgent review of the system and they support regions looking to boycott National Standards training. The APPA decision adds to the stand taken against implementing the Standards by schools in Tai Tokerau (Northland) and Invercargill. Since the APPA announcement, the Southland and Canterbury Principals' Associations have joined Auckland's decision.

On 6 July, a hui of more than 200 Maori educators in Rotorua, attending the annual hui of Te Reo Areare - the Maori Council of the education sector union NZEI Te Riu Roa, issued a strong vote of no confidence in National Standards, saying they will damage the learning of tamariki Maori.

Our Board's stance is clear. The Board of Trustees and staff of both schools:

supported the NZEI call for a trial before the implementation of National Standards proceeds
were signatories to the NZEI School Communities appeal to the Prime Minister
were signatories to the official NZEI petition to Parliament campaigning for a trial
hosted the NZEI Bus Tour for the Otara community - other schools, our BOT and staff, and community members attended

- and are against the implementation of National Standards because they:

do not represent a Maori or Pasifika world view and therefore disadvantage our Maori and Pasifika students
come from a dominant Pakeha ideology and hegemony, which will perpetuate the marginalisation and 'ghettoising' of our Maori and Pasifika students and further negate their cultural competencies and identities
are contrary to the goals and design of the National Curriculum, which our two schools support due to its alignment with our practice and developed learning model, and for its flexibility to be specific to our community.
will distort a balanced curriculum approach by requiring schools to focus on the Standards to the exclusion of other learning. This distortion will be particularly evident in low-decile, Maori and Pasifika schools such as ours
are untested
will not solve the issues of underachievement
will undermine students' identities as learners and label some children as failures from a very early age
have been driven by distorted data gathered and interpreted with flawed methodology
have been implemented without consultation with educators or communities
will result in league tables which will again disadvantage schools in low-decile, Maori and Pasifika communities nationally
have failed when implemented in other countries

The current BOT position is to delay any implemention of, or teacher professional development in, National Standards until these issues and our serious concerns about the effect of National Standards on our students is addressed through; thorough consultation with community and professional educators; professional development of teachers; adequate resourcing for students identified; the standards are responsive to Maori and Pasifika worldviews; and a process is determined that prevents the development of league tables using the data.

Te Whanau o Tupuranga and Clover Park Middle School will continue to discuss the issues with parents and:

benchmark students' learning outcomes and progress against national norms through the use of resources already readily available in schools
use these resources to supplement and provide comparisons with school-based assessment resources:
report this achievement to parents in plain language which gives parents reliable information about their child's progress against national benchmarks
continue to report on, and discuss with parents and whanau, equally important learning outcomes based on cultural identity, cultural knowledges and competencies, home language/s, relationships, and all aspects of learning 'as' Maori, Samoan, Tongan, Cook Islands Maori, or who you are. These are not included, and not valued, in the required national standards.

BIG Changes!

2011-01-23T11:11:00.000+13:00

Someone once said that resistance to change is like stopping breathing - if you succeed, you're dead! It's just as well we are all very much alive and kicking on our school campus because there is just one constant, and that's change. We are GOOD at change though, because we have plenty of experience with it!

From Friday 28 January 2010, Te Whanau o Tupuranga and Clover Park Middle School cease to exist in their own separate worlds and merge to become a new 'special-character' secondary school for Years 7 to 13 students, called Kia Aroha College. This is a major change from the outside, but inside the campus it's a continuation of what we have been doing for a very long time - but now our older Pasifika students get to stay right through to Year 13 as well.

The details of why this is happening and how it will work are well documented on our new Kia Aroha College website, so there is no need to repeat them here. However, the change is a dream come true for our Pasifika community, and the end result of yet another too long, too hard, struggle with officialdom and the "one-size-fits-all" brigade.

Change always gives you cause to reflect and I've been enjoying doing just that in two very different ways over the holiday break.

Firstly, I'm at the stage in my doctoral thesis where I am writing up the results of staff and former students' surveys and interviews and I am struck, as always, with the passion for, and commitment to, the work that we do, and the impact that has on the young people who learn from us, but teach us so much more. This writing has been a humbling experience.

Secondly in a very different, social networking, forum a former student started a conversation seeking memories of their experiences in Te Whanau o Tupuranga or Clover Park Middle School. Many of us have become obsessed I think with daily checking to see who has joined the conversation! I'm fascinated by the things former students remember! One comment starts a string of memories and when that thread is exhausted another comment starts the ball rolling again. There have been debates, confessions, questions, jokes, whole threads devoted to the words of school songs, demands for a reunion, and reconnections all over the place! There are many things I also remember - and some I don't - and am glad I didn't know about at the time! It doesn't matter what time of the day or night you think you'll have a quick look, there is always a past student online and commenting - because they are now spread across other countries and time zones. Former students have shared questions about families, the names and ages of their children, what they are doing, and where they are living. This reading and writing has been funny, and heartwarming, and about whanau - and I'm as hooked as everyone else!

Both activities make you realise that what we do matters, in big ways, such as major school restructuring, and in small ways that you don't even notice at the time. Both also make you realise that what we say about whanau and those lifelong connections, is also true. One former student, in her comments on the networking site, sums it all up when she says that in Te Whanau o Tupuranga she learned :

... how to stand up for yourself, how to respect other cultures, how to respect your own culture, how to stand in front of crowds and speak, how to sing, how to dance, how to eat chicken, chips, and popcorn mixed, how to deal, how to perform, how to use computers, how to facilitate workshops, how to pohiri, how to manaaki, how to be proud of who you are, how to LIVE, how to LOVE.

Thanks Haley Maxwell (Class of 94) for allowing me to use your words. Thanks Te Whanau o Tupuranga for your support for this new direction in our journey, when it would have been easy to resist and enjoy what you had achieved as a separate school. Thanks Clover Park for the dream, the drive and commitment to make this new change happen.

Welcome to Kia Aroha College!

Culture Matters

2010-10-08T14:16:00.000+13:00

I have just received an email from the Senior Ministerial Advisor / Acting Chief of Staff, of the Maori Party, sending me a copy of the speech, made this morning by Hon Tariana Turia, Co-leader of the Maori Party at the Education Symposium, 'Culture Matters: One Shoe Doesn't Fit All' at the Morero Marae in Taumarunui.

The email said, "I thought you would be interested in receiving a copy of this speech, given Minister Turia's mention of your work."

I am definitely interested - and flattered of course. I appreciate the acknowledgement of the "Colouring in the White Spaces" research, and most of all I appreciate Minister Turia's observation, based on her reading of my research report, that:

"...education at Te Whanau o Tupuranga is as much about preparation for survival in te Ao Maori as it is about preparation for survival in the world. It is about building the fitness that enables us to endure; celebrating that which is at the very essence of who we are. This is Whanau Ora in practice - developing the resilience; feeding the soul, nurturing the sense of self-belief that we know we can do this. Knowing who we are."

That certainly sums up our intentions for our rangatahi in Te Whanau o Tupuranga and Clover Park Middle School. I was therefore interested in other media reports over the last two days following the release on 5th October of the Education Review Office's latest national report, Promoting Success for Māori Students: Schools' Progress (June 2010). ERO posed a simple question to schools - how had they improved Maori student achievement?

The ERO report concludes with the statement that "ERO does not consider any school can claim to be high performing unless the school can demonstrate that the majority of Mâori learners are progressing well and succeeding as Mâori." That's definitely good news, but those last two crucial words were not in the question they asked.

It bothers me that those words, "as Maori" - that "very essence" of being Maori that Tariana Turia refers to, are always missing from any discussion about Maori learners' "achievement" and "success." So it is again in the ERO report. In spite of alluding to the principles of Ka Hikitia, and despite comments by the chief review officer in the media about the need for more Maori culture in schools, the report, as do the goals of Ka Hikitia in fact, comes back to the same limited, technical, academic, goals, and national expectations (including standards, norms and benchmarks), that we use as our sole indicators of success or achievement in schools.

I would want ERO to ask mainstream schools for their evidence that Maori students were able to "be Maori" and enjoy success "as Maori" - and not allow them to hide those crucial outcomes behind the usual norms and academic statistics. It's not that these are not important - of course they are - it's just that they are not enough! Any school whose measurement of success for Maori students is limited to these academic outcomes is only seeing half of the picture, I believe.

Tariana's speech went on to say, "We must outfit all our mokopuna to be leaders, to be prepared with the 'stuff that matters' - and that stuff, inevitably includes culture. We must liberate our minds to promote Maori knowledge, kaupapa, tikanga, philosophies, worldviews. We must create the expectations of reciprocity, to foster the sense of collective responsibility to care for one another; to fulfil our aspirations for the wellbeing of our whanau."

I couldn't agree more. I just can't see that thinking in the ERO report. I can't see that thinking in the government's introduction of National Standards, or the unfortunate support of the Maori Party for this policy. I can't see that thinking in the comments, also reported this morning, by Waiariki Maori Party MP, Te Ururoa Flavell who suggests we look at some positive ways to incentivise those schools who are able to "pull through" Maori students, including the "carrot" of giving Maori students the ability to "move zones to better schools."

I agree with the sentiment that a positive approach is always better than a negative viewpoint, but I don't like the implications inherent in this thinking. "Pull through" - to what? I'm not sure it's the students who need to be pulled - anywhere. How about the adults? "Better" schools- defined how?"Move zones"? I am really hoping that Te Ururoa didn't intend that to be a deficit statement about low-decile schools, but you can guarantee that's how it will be interpreted and schools like ours, already doing a great job, will once again be the targets.

It is definitely way past time to "liberate our minds," and think differently about education for Maori learners. The minds that need liberating first are those of our national leaders and policy and decision-makers, or we will continue to replicate the failure of mainstream schools to provide a relevant education for our rangatahi. In our two schools we actively and intentionally teach our students about social justice and leadership. It would be helpful if they could look to positive role models in our government and education fields. Minister Turia's speech is a great, and unfortunately rare, example.

Back to the Future at Pataua North!

2010-07-24T14:15:00.000+12:00

Over the holiday break I had the wonderful experience of being able to revisit my past, when my family decided to celebrate my birthday by spending a weekend together in the place where I grew up.

All of my primary schooling was in the one-roomed Pataua School, where the greatest total roll number ever was 16. All my secondary years were spent riding in my father's bus from Pataua North to Whangarei Girls' High School every day. It has been 47 years since we left the community, and I hadn't been back in all that time.

I obviously expected change, and it was there, in the numbers and quality of homes and beach houses and the tar-sealed road all the way from Whangarei! The school is long gone, replaced by an outdoor education centre, in its prime location right on the banks of the Pataua Estuary.

What I didn't expect was how much had remained the same. The footbridge my parents, and a community committee, fought so hard to establish still spans the river, joining Pataua North to Pataua South. Before the bridge we came to school by boat, until we moved to live in our bus garage on Pataua North. Others came on horseback or walked. Some families crossed two rivers to get to school. The beauty of the location, right on the coast, the mountain - the original Pa site, the names of original families preserved in road names. Our old home is gone, but its location now has a street name and number. That's progress!

My long-suffering whānau were treated to all these stories, and I came home reflecting on what it was about that upbringing and education, that shaped the way I have thought about learning ever since?

The only Pākehā families, other than ourselves, the teacher, and one shop owner, were farmers, well spread out along the road from Pataua to Whareora. The strength of the community was the long-established Maori whānau. The seeds of my interest in Māori education were planted in the Pataua School Kapa Haka group (all 16 of us), in the number of Māori hui, celebrations, tangi, and events we were always part of, and my daily interaction in a school where Pākehā were the minority.

With hindsight, I'm sure it mattered that the sole teacher was always a white male, and that the farming community was the only source of any economic wealth. However, even with my rose-coloured glasses off, my memories are of a community that came together in the school, of a respect for Māori culture and tikanga, of the school as the hub of all community activities - calf days, gala days, church services, kapa haka, sports events, community meetings, fundraising, weaving classes, making piupiu, carving - that all happened in the school grounds. We even had a tennis club, on the school tennis court - which is still there! There was one shop selling basic needs, no transport other than the bus once a day, few families had cars, or telephones, and people had to get together, face to face, in order to communicate. The isolation of the community was both its curse (or so we thought when we were young!) and its strength.

I'm not suggesting we should go back in time, although many small, rural, schools now still have that same rich community experience, however there are lessons to be learned in our modern, large, urban, schools and frenetic daily lives, about the way we interact and engage families in their children's learning. There are lessons about the importance of the cultures that underpin every community. There are lessons about cultural content and learning from each other. There are lessons from the kaumatua and kuia who were constantly present in the community. All those lessons were the ones that stuck with me when I started teaching, were strengthened when my own children went to school, and have followed me into school leadership and research.

Thanks Pataua! I can't wait to go back for another visit!

The old school site

Pataua Mountain