Kia ora ... that racism is pretty close to the surface!!

I love the words of a wonderful colleague of mine who says that we live in a multicultural society in a bi-cultural nation. If you don't like that, you may want to stop reading now, because you are not going to like the rest of this post.

A part of our biculturalism is our multilingual status (three official languages as I understand it - Te Reo Māori, English, and Sign). I have only a small knowledge of Te Reo Māori so far, something I am working on. In my opinion it's a beautiful language, a tāonga for Aoteoroa: it is the only place in the world in which Te Reo Māori is spoken. There isn't a 'somewhere else' that you can go to speak it. It is beholding on us both morally and legally to sustain and grow the language. Lorraine and I attended two night classes run by Anton Matthews here in Christchurch, introductory classes to Te Reo. He expressed the desire to see us all normalise the use of te Reo, even if it is as simple as saying Kia ora. I love that.

Kia ora

In that spirit, one of my goals for Hornby High School is that we hear Māori spoken as often as English around the kura. It's a BHAG, a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, but I love ambition. A part of that journey for me (on top of the deliberate an intentional work I do to expand my vocabulary and understanding) is that I greet everyone at our kura in Te Reo, without exception .. normally a 'Kia ora', sometimes a 'mōrena', or an 'ata marie', or even a 'tēnā koe' .. you get the idea. In my head that has become normalised, and that's what I want to happen across the kura. You have to start somewhere.

Now here's the thing: as a result I simply do that whenever greet people, on the street, in a shop, wherever. This afternoon I was in our front garden pottering away (dead heading flowers actually, not that that matters), and several groups of people walked past, out for a stroll in the first sun we have seen for three or four days. I automatically said 'Kia ora'. The responses gave me pause to think, to feel sad, to feel sick in fact. In each case. the people immediately looked away, and did not return the greeting.

Why?

Maybe they didn't hear me. I doubt it, we were pretty close. Maybe they were embarrassed and not sure how to respond. Possibly, but all three groups? Maybe there was an assumption about my race, and so a discomfort.. I suspect so. I am of European descent by the way.

What does this all mean? Well, I can't draw any conclusion with any certainty, but I have a suspicion. My suspicion is that what I was seeing was racism. There was this assumption about me which then evoked the 'look away and ignore' response. From my position of white privilege I guess I have the luxury of assuming the best - that it was not racism. I am choosing not to make that assumption, but rather to suspect that racism is exactly what I was seeing. It was bloody uncomfortable.

So my suggestion to you: as a social experiment (and also as a way of supporting the use of the second of our aural languages in Aotearoa), just try greeting everyone with kia ora, or tēnā koe, rather than hello. See what happens, see how it feels. At the very least you will help normalise the language. I actually hope however that you may also see just how close to the surface you will find an underlying racism. It is only from a place of personal of discomfort, I think, that those of us with our 'white privilege' will make the changes that we need if we are to be a genuinely bicultural nation.

I will persist with my BHAG.. I will persist in  my use of Te Reo Māori, not in a way meant to intimidate, but rather in my intent to normalise its use. After all, you don't see that response in Canada where French and English are both official language!! But of course both of those languages are spoken by those of European descent.

Kia tau te mauri

Robin

School leadership and 'moral purpose'.

I have been interested in the concept of 'moral purpose' in education. This has increasingly been a feature of the leadership literature.

Our New Zealand Ministry of Education has this to say:

Leading with moral purpose means having a commitment to making a difference in the lives and outcomes of students as a result of their experiences at school. Barber and Fullan (2005) explain that: “The central moral purpose consists of constantly improving student achievement and ensuring that achievement gaps, wherever they exist, are narrowed.” For a school to achieve this, there needs to be a shared commitment to explicit values.

Source http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Attitudes-values-and-ethics/Moral-purpose-and-shared-leadership

Professor David Hopkins, in an article titled 'Leadership for powerful learning' (ACEL Journal Term 2 2015, Vol 37 No 2) states:

Leaders are driven by a moral purpose about enhancing student learning. Moral purpose activates the passion to reach for the goal and prompts leaders to empower teachers and others to make schools a critical force for improving communities"

Now there's a powerful statement.

'The Innovator's Mindset'

I thought this was an appropriate follow up to yesterday's blog post about assessment and risk taking:


http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/4783


Thanks, Pauline, a nice find!!

The optimal parent zone ...

Lists of critical success factors for schools often include strong parental engagement. Hattie ('Visible learning for teachers: maximising impact on learning", Routledge, 2012) cites 'strong positive relationships with parents' (Page 151) as one of nine such factors supported by the metadata.

My experience teaching in state schools certainly seemed to support the contention at the micro level of individual experience. However I have also seen situations in which there can be too much involvement from parents. This might involve the 'helicopter parent' behaviour in which children are not allowed the room to be themselves, to make their own mistakes, and take the consequences of inappropriate choices. It might also include that situation in which parents involve themselves overly in their children's' learning, completing work for them when it should be the children's work.

A recent work experience showed that the ubiquitous characteristic of e-learning tools seems to facilitate this behavior even more than before, or alternatively makes the same behaviour more obvious or transparent. After all haven't there always been parents who have to some degree 'done' the project or homework for their children? This specific experience involved a parent making direct edits of a student's work on Googledocs. Thank goodness for the 'See revision history' function.

So it seems that it is possible to have both too little and too much parent engagement.

It simply struck me that there must therefore be an 'optimal zone' in which you want this support to operate.

How would we measure it? No idea, but it's an interesting concept, and one that should engage us as professionals working in education. I do believe that it is a function of:

• school culture
• the degree of approachability of all professional members of the school community, 
• the ways in which we report to the parent community (the frequency, the tone, the quality of commentary, the 'accessibility' of the language, and the layout of reports
• the friendliness, the sense of welcome at parent interview evenings
• the degree to which parents are made welcome at school functions
• The welcome that new members of the school community (students and parents) receive when they first approach or join the community

I think the list is much longer, but that will do for now.