Identity, Culture and Language

 

I recently viewed Anne Milne's closing keynote speech at the 2017 uLearn conference which provides much food for thought around Cultural Responsiveness.

In her closing speech, she challenged us all on our culturally responsive pedagogy. She stated, " If Māori students have been failing for such a long time, why do we continue to think the children are the broken ones - shouldn't we need to change our pedagogy to suit the child? What are we doing to promote the achievement of Maori AS Maori? " 

I believe it is important to ensure we are continually thinking about ways we can be culturally responsive as Kaiako and promote the identity, culture and language of every student. 

As kaiako we need to identify ways in which we can support our Māori students and see our learning environments and teaching styles through the eyes of a Māori parent.

Do our learning environments reflect and support our Māori ākonga as Māori?

Do our teaching styles and learning programmes support and nurture our Māori ākonga as Māori?

These are questions we should all be asking ourselves.

What is Your Greatest Strength?

Is this something that you can immediately identify? Do you rely on your strengths to problem-solve and plan future pathways?

While it is great to be able to identify your strengths and share these strengths to benefit others, we need to be cautious about relying on them. If we become complacent and rely on utilising just our strengths to make a difference, we may be overlooking other options, and, in fact, allowing our strengths to become our weakness.

We need to be aware of the context when we are problem-solving and planning and be prepared to step outside our comfort zones, to look at things in a fresh light, and see what else might be worth trying or considering.