Inspire In Education - Blog

Conrad Waitoa Hawkes Bay Person of the Year Runner Up

Fri, 22 Dec 2017 23:37:01 GMT

Conrad Waitoa Hawkes Bay Person of the Year Runner Up 2017
Inspire In Education founder

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503462&objectid=11963793

Conrad Waitoa with his William Pike Challenge Award recipents

Sun, 10 Dec 2017 01:45:24 GMT

Congratulations to our Inspire In Education students, Dayton, Jazmin and Jason on achieving their William Pike Challenge Award 🥇 with 3 x 100% completions. We’ve enjoyed mentoring you along with way, but this is all your very own achievements.

WPCA love helping educators create adventurous opportunities for youth to develop life skills, knowledge and awareness of their community.

The WPCA framework creates the conditions to build resilience, connectedness, leadership and a growth mindset through outdoor challenges, community service and passion projects.

Our flexible structure helps passionate educators deliver purposeful Education Outside the Classroom (EOTC) to develop a positive youth culture.

Educators and young people use our innovative software to track progress, save time and access resources.

More about WPCA see here http://williampike.co.nz/

Inspire In Education students Pepeha with Matua Conrad Waitoa

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:20:04 GMT

Inspire In Education with Conrad Waitoa, Design & Create IIE Logo Pendants

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:16:51 GMT

Cooking, Baking with Inspire In Educations Conrad Waitoa & Verena Waitoa

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:12:31 GMT

Inspire In Education with Conrad Waitoa | Founder | Principal Faciliator

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 22:16:34 GMT

Every Child Deserves a Good Start in Life

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 20:50:12 GMT

Every child is entitled to have a good start in life. It isn’t where you start in life, it's what you do with life that determines where you end up in life, and we are blessed to be living in a country that, no matter where we start, we have opportunities so long as we believe in our self, we believe in the society and the country, and we believe that we can self-improve and educate our self as we go along. And that's the key to success.

But it begins with the gift of a good start. If we don't give that gift to each and every one of our tamariki (children), if we don't invest at the earliest age, we're going to be running into difficulties. It's why we have a dropout rate of roughly 25 percent overall and almost 50 percent of our minority population living in low-income areas because they're not getting the gift of a good start.

"Teaching and learning should bring joy. How powerful would our world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think, and who had a champion? Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be. Is this job tough? Yes. But it is not impossible. We can do this. We're born to make a difference."

So, it's so essential that we put this culture back into our schools, whanau, communities, and students.

So how?

Through an Effective Teaching Profile for Maori students - Inspire In Education links in with the Education Councils, TATAIAKO

The Effective Teaching Profile consists of six elements.

Ako – teachers can use strategies that promote effective teaching interactions and relationships with their learners.
Wananga – teachers are able to engage in effective teaching interactions with Māori students as Māori
Manaakitanga – teachers care for their students as culturally located human beings above all else.
Mana Motuhake – teachers care about the performance of their students.
Nga Whakapiringatanga – teachers are able to create a secure, well-managed learning environment.
Kotahitanga – teachers promote, monitor and reflect on outcomes that in turn lead to improvements in educational achievement for Māori students.

Kotahitanga

Monitor Maori student achievement data and use this information to modify teaching practices, sharing this information with students and whanau so that they are fully involved in the learning journey.
Target: To have more Maori learners, engaged and focused on achieving National Standards in Reading, Writing and Mathematics by the end of Year 8.

Whakapiringatanga

Creating future-focused learning environments. Exploring the types of learner and teacher practices, and environments that promote learning and also develop skills of collaboration, resilience, and citizenship.

Manaakitanga

Aim for all students to learn in an inclusive environment that celebrates and responds to cultures from across the globe.

Whanaungatanga

We believe that effective home-school partnerships are a key ingredient in student learning and that our local community provides many rich opportunities for students to learn in authentic situations alongside the people within the community.

Te Kotahitanga professional development programmes that:

supports teachers to improve all Māori students' learning and achievement, enabling teachers to create a culturally responsive context for learning which is responsive to evidence of student performance and understandings
Enables school leaders, and the wider school community, to focus on changing school structures and organisations to more effectively support teachers in this endeavour.

Being Māori in a Non-Māori Community

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 21:53:55 GMT

That feeling you get when you're about to speak, do I really fit in, will they accept me, will I get the vote the tick of approval. This was my head space until a few years ago.

When I whaikōrero (make a formal speech) to an audience I will always open with a karakia ( verb -tia to recite ritual chants, say grace, pray, recite a prayer, chant) and my pepeha ( noun: tribal saying, tribal motto, proverb (especially about a tribe), set form of words, formulaic expression, saying of the ancestors, figure of speech, motto, slogan - set sayings known for their economy of words and metaphor and encapsulating many Māori values and human characteristics) regardless of my time limit | topic | agenda and the status of the audience.

To me if nothing else you'll leave knowing who I am and where I am from. I'm not fluent in te reo but I'm extremely proud of who I am and my future!

I recently watched presenters speaking to an audience two of the six were Māori tane (male) and one referenced to being fluent in Te Reo. And to my surprise, one opened with Kia Ora (hello) ended with thank you and the fluent speaker opened and closed in English.

Each speaker had an opportunity to open and introduce themselves and then 5-6 further opportunities to answers questions from the floor and 5 minutes with a closing statement.

All 6 presenters delivered in English to a live audience 95% pakeha | non-Māori and live-streamed to a bi-culture audience. Now some were very good, good and like some auditions on TV shows like the X Factor, need the whanau (family) and takatāpui (close friends) to be more honest before they attempt such acts!

So I sit here wondering why? Why didn't our proud Māori kawatau (verb: to speak frequently of one's intentions, speak frequently of one's expectations) in te reo then English regardless of the time limits or their reason for being on stage?

I know they're not embarrassed to be Māori but I at least expected the fluent speaker to take the opportunity to whakapapa (noun his genealogy, genealogical table, lineage, descent - reciting whakapapa is, an important skill and reflects the importance of genealogies in Māori society in terms of leadership, land and fishing rights, kinship and status).

If you're speaking and have a second language, regardless of the audience stand proud and tell them who you are and where you're from in your waiwaiā (beautiful) native tongue and it only takes me 57.44 sec and I'm not fluent but within that time acknowledge our creator, the past, present and my whakapapa (genealogy).

I'll leave you all with this thought - When we don't offer our pepeha te reo or English, it is like answering a phone call from a blocked number - hello, hello, who is it? who? where are you calling from? who? from where? 90% of us will hang up because we don't know who the caller is or we'll let them talk and finish the call and still be none the wiser!

Author

Ko Conrad Waitoa toku ingoa | Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu | Nō Maungawharau ahau

Students design business logo

Sun, 29 Oct 2017 03:43:20 GMT

Read about these ka mau te wehi (awesome! fantastic!) akonga (students) Click here village_press_article.pdf

Māori cultural competence standards

Sun, 29 Oct 2017 03:37:29 GMT

We know that Maori students, in particular, Maori boys, are sadly often over-represented in the tail end of our educational achievement curve.

As such, we often find them in starring roles in many school’s achievement targets. It appears that many of our Māori boys are underachieving across the board, and most notably in writing.

More importantly, they appear to be achieving at a substantially lower standard than female classmates are, and most certainly in comparison to Pakeha / European students of their same age, and in the same learning environments.

Therefore, it makes sense that we must have achievement targets aimed at improving the achievement of Māori boys in writing, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, is there more to this story?

Statements that may be born from teachers’ perceptions, and which are sitting beneath the targets relating to improving the writing achievement of our Maori boys:

• Māori boys do not like writing
• Māori boys find writing too hard
• Māori boys are disengaged in learning
• Māori boys misbehave and distract others
• Māori boys have a bad attitude and/or a closed mindset
• Māori boys have a poor work ethic
• Māori boys get little or no support at home

Now, it might be that some, all, or none of these statements are true for our Māori boys.

However, my wondering is this:
How do we know?
And what is the story behind this data?