Planning a Culturally Responsive Workshop #1

During our 2nd COL meeting, I made a strong connection with Poto and Christine from Glen Taylor Primary as we shared the same inquiry topic - how to bring to the forefront culturally responsive pedagogy to support our Pasifika students.  I had not talked properly to Poto or Christine before that COL meeting and to find out that they shared the same concerns and the same frustrations as me was validating.  We found that our reasons for why we were concerned were very similar and knew that we needed to support each other in how we could share this message with the world.  We decided that we wanted to work together to present a workshop at the upcoming Manaiakalani cluster wide teachers’ only day being held at Glen Taylor, so we set about organising our first meeting.  

The purpose of the workshop would be to encourage teachers to reflect on their practice in response to a culturally responsive practice.  We decided to call the working 'Teaching through a cultural lens".

We looked at the first Turu of the Tapasā around Identity, Language & Culture and shared stories of how important it was for teachers to know a students name.  We also thought about students who would be judged by their appearance ie. not a ‘full’ Samoan or Tongan or students whose names were very Pacific, but they didn’t look like your typical P.I child.  We brainstormed names of students that we knew and found a common connection in that some students were ex students of Glen Taylor who I currently teach so it made sense for these ex-students to go back to their old school to share their experiences.

We selected about 5 students between us.  Because our kids were different ages, we thought that we’d guide them through the initial introductions by creating a basic speaking frame:

Speaking Frame 

I’ve been called by ….. But my name is … given to me by ….  I am …. (ethnicit/es) 

We decided that we needed another meeting to expand on our introduction and so planned to add more information to our planning doc and to meet again in a weeks time.  I left the meeting feeling excited about the prospect of allowing our kids voices to be heard and thankful that we had each other.