Week 27 - Examine Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsivness

Week 27
Activity 3

Toitū te kupu, toitū te mana, toitū te whenua

Without language, without mana, without land, the essence of being Māori would be lost

What:

Our senior leadership team have been looking for ways to improve parent engagement for some time now, the things we have put in place have never really improved the problem. We made the assumption that, that was down to the fact that parents didn't feel comfortable to come into school and work alongside us. We really kept thrashing a dead horse, because we didn't look outside the box, we just kept having parent hui, home-school-partnership evenings and things similar to that, with very little parent turn out. In recent discussions we have been discussing setting up a school website that parents can download onto their devices and get updates on the go. This has been put on the shelf at the moment while our I.T team look into it at a later date. The Mindlab group that I have been a part of have decided that we cant' wait and based on the feedback we got from our parents, online applications/platforms are the way to go. Some classes are currently using Facebook and Class Dojo.

So What:

So like I mentioned above, parents don't engage with school activities due to other commitments and we need to change the way we interact with them to counter act this issue. We are looking at the using the interrelated concept of ranatiratanga (teacher effectiveness) to overcome this happening in the future by improving our communication methods. We need to remember that parents are busy, times have changed, we have a parent base where both parents have to work to survive, so in order to have effective relationships with our whanau we need to change the way we reach out to them. We know that having high expectations of all of learners is integral for success to occur, and we need to have high expectations of ourselves as practitioners as well if we want to see change and success. If we can strengthen our communication pathways with parents this is going to strengthen our students chances of being the best learner they can be. We need the support and advice of our whanau to reinforce what we are doing at school. When all parties work together the child feels whole and confident to take risks and showcase who they are, and be proud of who they are.

“The better the engagement between parents, families, and schools, the greater the positive impact on student learning. Partnerships with whānau/iwi and the wider community can be enhanced by the use of technologies. Technologies facilitate ongoing reciprocal two-way communication between students and parents, giving parents anywhere, anytime access to their child's learning. This leads to improved learning outcomes for students through blended, culturally inclusive, and sustainable practices” (TKI).

Now What?

We are going to continue to use Facebook to share learning with parents. We are also going to use the Seesaw App with our parents and monitor how this goes (is it useful/successful). We will then share our findings and see which platform is the most effective way to communicate with and engage our whanau in their child's learning. We also need to ensure that we are fully committed to carrying out this trial, we can't give it 50% and expect to see great change, if we don't give it 100% we will not be effective and not being great role models for our students and parents. The senior leadership team will need to support the initiative as well by providing Professional Development for staff. Allowing experts to come in and work with staff to get the most out of using the Seesaw app and Facebook. We will need to create a school policy that reinforces how often we need to upload/update the applications. Lastly we will need to provide support for our community with sending home How to booklets for downloading and using the Seesaw app.

• TKI. Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Beyond-the-classroom/ Engaging-with-the-community/Home-school-partnerships