Activity 9 Evaluation of cultural responsiveness in practice.

I am of New Zealand Pakeha descent. I presume my roots would be of English and Irish origins, I have never taken the time to trace my family ancestry, but I do know that sadly, I don't have any Maori ancestors. I have always been fascinated and proud of New Zealand's indigenous culture. I took Te Reo Maori in my 6th and 7th form year at school, determined to be bilingual.  Sadly I never achieved that goal, but from my experiences, and many marae visits, I have a deep ongoing respect for the language and culture.  I enjoy teaching Te Reo Maori and support its inclusion in the NZ Curriculum. I only wish were we all able to give the students the depth and expertise that really is required to teach it beyond learning simple vocabulary and our pepeha. This is an area I would like to see more PD provided for in our school so that I could increase my skills in Te Reo.
Mike Hogan - the principal at Prebbleton School in Christchurch, refers to to his schools previous cultural responsiveness as being 'tokenism' and just 'surface stuff'. He identified a need within his school for a better "consultation with Maori whanau that is not on our terms but theirs...how they want to react with us" (ED Talk, 2012). In regards to my culturally responsive pedagogy, I feel that we sometimes do just scratch the surface. At the beginning of the year,  we as a school break down the  achievement data  to determine where the gaps are within achievement and ethnicity. While our achievement of Maori and Pasifika students are the lowest of the ethnicities at our school, they are in fact improving. This is an area we have focused on school wide.  Responding to students cultural needs, is just as necessary as their academic needs.
One area my school addresses cultural responsiveness well:
Learning and school wide activities
We wanted to find out what families were involved the most within our school in terms of ethnicity, to see if there were gaps that we could breach. In order to encourage the families of these students into the school, a survey of family involvement was carried out in 2015. The following results were discovered.

As the graph shows, the biggest involvement in school is the NZ European families with 31 of the 37 identified NZ European families involved in some way with he extra curricular activities offered to families within the school. of the 16 Maori families, 11 were involved. Of the 58 Pasifika families, 40 were involved. These activities often involved attending community events such as our family BBQ night, or school trips.

After accumulating and sorting this data it was then decided that we needed to find more ways to bring the families into the school and involve them as much as possible. The Pasifika Fono was introduced and the Maori Hui. These both had good responses and turnout for the cultures involved. I feel that in this area the school works well with the community to encourage them to take an active part in their child's education.
Alongside the cultural themed evenings, the school continues to provide programmes such as Breakfast Club, The Walking School Bus, Eat My Lunch and Parent Reading all of which rely on parent involvement to stay running. The school refers to the Kahikitia and Pasifika Education Plan in regards to helping achieve educational success. Kahikitia  illustrates that successes can be achieved when communities, iwi, schools and the Ministry of Education work in collaboration - mahi tahi (2015). The PEP vision is to 'see five out of five Pasifika leaners participating, engaging and achieving in education, secure their identities, languages and cultures and contributing fully to Aotearoa New Zealand's social, cultural and economic wellbeing (2015). These documents have been broken down and examined in our Teacher Only days, the afore mentioned school wide activities have come about in response to determining ways in which we can respond to the needs of our learners, and get the parents and whanau involved in our school.
An area the school addresses cultural responsiveness which needs improvement.
Communication methods.
Currently we are relying far too heavily of notes and newsletters going home to parents. Many notices are not received and some parents only step onto school ground to enrol their children, the relationship thereafter is almost non-existant. Student led conferences usually have a 70-90% attendance rate. This year 69% of my parents attended, of the 8 families that did not, 5 were Pasifika and 2 were Maori. As a school we need to breakdown the divide that these families have between school and home.
I have referred to the Tataiako - cultural competencies for teachers of Maori Learners for my personal appraisal goal for 2016.

I feel that my knowledge of the Maori families and the rich cultural learning resource they can bring to the classroom is underutilised. My aim is to  try to tap into the indigenous knowledge and skills within the wider school community. The school is trying to learn more through local elders about the cultural history of the area the school sits in. We want to acknowledge this as a school through cultural practices, dance, art and the use of waiata and karakia specific to the land and heritage around us. As I mentioned earlier I feel somewhat inadequate in teaching Te Reo, and yet I was born in New Zealand and have a history that has included the indigenous culture. Many of our teachers, as in our school, are from other cultures themselves and yet are expected to teach Te Reo confidently alongside, literacy, numeracy etc. Is this reasonable or practical when the pronunciation is foreign for many? I feel that a Te Reo expert to teach and demonstrate alongside the teachers would be a valuable resource in every school to do this subject justice and prevent it from being marginalised or taught inadequately.

In relation to my goal, I looked to a local Maori legend with my extension art group, to produce a mural designed and painted by the students of Kaiwhare, the Taniwha of the Manukau. It is more cultural learning experiences through which we can demonstrate cultural awareness and responsiveness.

References:
Edtalks.(2012, May 30). Mike Hogan: Culturally responsive practice in a mainstream school. [video file].Retrieved from: https://vimeo.com/43097812

Ministry of Education., (2011). Tataiako Cultural competencies for teachers of Maori Learners.Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/required/Tataiako.pdf

Ministry of Education., (2013). The Maori Education Strategy - Ka Hikitia Retrieved from: http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/overall-strategies-and-policies/the-maori-education-strategy-ka-hikitia-accelerating-success-20132017/

Ministry of Education., (2013). The Pasifika Education Plan Retrieved from: http://www.education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/overall-strategies-and-policies/pasifika-education-plan-2013-2017/