Glen Innes = Ukutoia

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy at Tamaki College

At Tamaki College we support this through data analysis, regular meetings with HODs to ‘dig into the data’, best practices strategies, teacher inquiry, knowing your learner, e.g. identifying priority learners and actioning interventions for non-achievers, building a culture of success by removing excuses, teacher clarity contributing to student clarity, with regards to teacher planning, teaching practices, appropriate tasks and assessments. Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy underpins student success. 
- Soana Pamaka

On Tuesday the first of August I led a PLuG (Professional Learning Group) that looked at Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy at our school.

We started by scanning the Kia Eke Panuku Tamaki College Site, the Kia Eke Panuku National Site and discussing what we know about Kia Eke Panuku from our experiences. From our discussion, our group identified 12 keywords associated with ‘Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy’, they were:

• Mana

• Collaboration

• Connectedness

• Motivation

• Tu tangata

• Piripono

• Interactive

• Roots

• Power-sharing

• Involvement

• Normalising

• Kotahitanga

From these words our group developed a shared explanation of what ‘Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy’ is:

Growing the mana of our students in collaborative ways so that they are able to make connections with their roots, normalising Te Kotahitanga. This can be done by involving and motivating through power-sharing. Connectedness with the parents, the students, wider community, tertiary providers and the school.

We then refined this paragraph down to the following:

Growing the mana of our students in collaborative ways so that they are able to make connections with their roots, normalising Te Kotahitanga. 

Whaea Melba shared the following whakatauki with the group, which we feel complemented our refined explanation of CRRP:

Ko Au Te Awa ko Te Awa Ko Au
I am the river and the river is me

Whaea also taught us all something new - the Maori name for Glen Innes is Ukutoia. I look forward to sharing this with our students. 

We then finished the session by identifying new priority students for Term 3 and discussing how we can put our new learning into practice.