I'm a Lifelong Learner!!

What? Never before had opened Google scholar, never before had I even considered backing up my thoughts with research. The fact that someone else out there had been thinking the same thing and actually carried out the research to prove it, was very refreshing. I could now literally prove my point!! Using reflection, theory and evidence to guide changes in my practice will be one of the biggest changes I will take away with me from MindLab. I loved the exposure to new knowledge and ideas which the professional readings and research bought me. The requirement to reflect through blogging was at first foreign and difficult. So much of my reflective thinking had been just in my head or in a verbal download in a side-line collegial conversation. Now I was able to put these reflections on a platform with an authentic audience and with genuine feedback. Reading other teacher blog reflections was so encouraging also, it helped challenge me to think differently. So What? The Ministry ...

All our students need a hope and a future to look forward to. They need to know that they can go forward while still holding on to all that they are and have become. Our students are drenched in so much of what we say and do from the day they walk into our doors at the age of 5. We want to shape them and give them all these possibilities. But if they walk out the doors at the end of their learning journey having lost who they deeply were culturally, then have we succeeded? Russel Bishop talked about the accumulated gaps between Maori and non-Maori educational achievement. The gap is compounding. The power that a teacher has to make a difference in a Maori student can be life changing one way or the other. Throwing a couple of day courses and the odd youtube clip about how to improve Maori achievement is not going to solve the problem. It requires a complete shift to genuine cultural responsiveness from the teachers. Cultural responsiveness is reflected in five elements knowl...