Do better
My professional background in Primary teaching and tertiary academic advisory roles has equipped me with the ability to quickly spot the vague and slightly harried expression that comes over the face of a student when they have no idea what they are supposed to be doing. Their skittish sideways glances at their classmates will confirm that they've missed the key objective of the work in front of them and that they may well be alone in this confusion.
I watched the Prime Minister and Minister for Education fudge their way through media conferences this week and I have some feedback for them.
Oh dear, class - it seems that two of you didn’t understand the assignment. This is a good reminder for you all that there’s no point in pretending you know what to do, ploughing on hoping that no one would notice instead of asking for clarification. Remember, it’s never too late to ask for help - unless it’s the day that your work is due. As humiliating as it might feel to admit you have no idea what the objective of the task is, it’s far better than your attempted cover up becoming obvious to everyone around you.
Chris and Erica, I need to talk to you about your presentation on Te Ahu o te Reo. I am assuming that you left this to the last minute and thought that it wouldn’t be obvious. But quite frankly, the suggestion to cut $30 million of funding from training teachers in te reo Māori is a ridiculous proposal and shows how weak your grasp of this topic is. You’ve not cited your sources and your arguments are unjustified. Chris, you can’t just claim something you have no knowledge of is “not working” and Erica, you’ve decided that the programme was “not delivering” without showing any analysis of the wider issues. These statements contradict the lived experiences of the teachers who have trained with Te Ahu o te Reo who are quoted as saying “it’s been so transformative”. This is a huge discrepancy in your work!
Sorry, it seems that you have misunderstood the fundamental purpose of funding this programme, Chris & Erica. You see, reclaiming and revitalising an indigenous language under threat is not a KPI target to meet. It’s spiritual, healing, triggering, honouring, deepening work that takes years and decades. Generations, even. Certainly more than the four years that Te Ahu o te Reo has been running. As we have covered extensively in class, funding this mahi is about restoring right relationships with tāngata whenua from the Crown’s responsibility under Te Tiriti o Waitangi Article 2. Did you even do the required readings on Te Tiriti o Waitangi? If you had, you’d know that empowering and equipping kaiako to confidently teach more reo Māori is valuable over and above all else. Remember, we discussed the reo as a taonga with innate and intangible value at length last term? And if you had completed the work in our New Zealand Education History unit you would be more mindful of our inheritance as a British Colony where teachers beat the Māori language out of the Māori children for generations. Shameful!
Erica, I am disappointed that yet again you have seemingly taken one part of the problem at hand and misinterpreted it. No one is saying that resources for maths are not important but underfunding the education system is a bigger task to resolve that this assignment required. You’re not answering the question correctly if you think that taking funding from te reo Māori teacher training and redistributing it to maths resources is the solution. What you’ve done here is just send a passive aggressive message of devaluing te reo Māori. You are incorrect if you believe that the Māori language is simply just another curriculum subject to cover and it appears you’ve not got any credible sources and you’ve fabricated your referencing again, Erica. There’s mountains of great writing that backs up what anyone who has learnt te reo Maori experiences; that it has transformative power that algebra does not.
There’s another massive inaccuracy here that is particularly frustrating, and I’m especially concerned at your lack of basic understanding of your specialty area, Erica. Teaching in Aotearoa has become a more complex job than ever before, with resources, time, expertise and support for teachers stretching further than is sustainable. And you know that the teacher shortages, relief teaching shortages and lower teacher training enrolments all clearly demonstrate how unappealing a career it is to many. I am also concerned about your lack of critical awareness of your own bias. If you had both taken the time to sit with your discomfort and be honest you would have shown greater insights in your work. Chris, your own ongoing mispronunciation of kupu Māori and your strong Pākehā accent shows just how hard it has been for you to learn this language and the time it takes to “achieve” at it. If you could reflect on this, you’d see that the kaiako who have been learning through Te Ahu o te Reo most likely have been facing similar struggles to you.
If either of you had paid attention to what we’ve covered in class throughout this term, especially during Mahuru Māori - and even last week in Te Wiki o te reo Māori, you’d know that the process of learning a language is a vast and weighty one. Unlearning incorrect pronunciation, learning new vowel sounds, grammar structures and the appropriate tikanga to support this as professional development, with noho marae stays and wānanga on top of a teaching load is huge ask of teachers. It shouldn’t surprise you that many staff who may well be very keen ākonga struggle to complete the course. And you’ve shown some backwards capitalist values here that are very disappointing to see pop up in your work. Why would you suggest that there’s only value for people who finish a course of study, rather than seeing how these teachers who didn’t complete all the learning outcomes will have gained so much from every class they did attend and learning activity that they did tackle along the way? For someone who says they love maths so much, you’re not demonstrating a value in ‘showing your working’. We’ve gone over and over the importance of process, relationship, quality and yet here again you’re only discussing measurable outcomes, quantifiable data sets and any number of other outdated, Western ways of thinking. Hugely disappointing.
I’ve marked your work as Not Achieved. You have 1 week to rework this and resubmit. Please do not insult my intelligence thinking I wouldn’t notice if you try and use ChatGPT to do the whole thing again. Do better!
Āwhina mai is the Māori expression for 'I need help!' and perhaps it's one we could all get better at using when we are being ask to do things we know nothing about.