The inspiration was established in 2018.
An intention was articulated in 2021.
The funding was secured in 2022.
The Journey was completed at the end of 2023.
(But hopefully, the journey continues forever for the 91 students).
The following is the message I sent to the five amazing Educators and leaders who went on their own Design journey.
Fa’amalo, malo le taumafai!
We started more than a year ago. In November 2021, with the idea ‘to do something’ and you said (with my application framing) “we want funding for a program that is specifically ‘Pacifica’ in approach and delivery that works with Year 7/8s to uncover/discover/explore their personal cultural identity as a way of supporting wellbeing, which will result in a lot of good things – like self-confidence, sense of agency, BVC retention.”
For the kids, you said you wanted for them:
- Belief that you can do ‘it’ – “I can foot it with others” – self-confidence and pride.
- Understanding and knowing what you can do – or are capable of – sense of agency.
- Students don’t have to leave their culture, Porirua Pride – belonging and connection.
We got the funding in 2022.
And in 2023, you ran the program, with new team members, within multiple industrial actions, with now-standard Covid impacts, with – as Tino said – puberty and normal kid stuff, and normal life and work stuff.
We had session plans that became session-‘let’s see how it plays out’ loose guidelines and frameworks for some consistency
We had meetings to plan, to change, to pivot, to tailor, to alter, to get back on track, to change tack.
You connected with people and experts and professionals. You brought them in to share and work with the kids.
All absolutely appropriate when we are trying something different, something ‘innovative’, something that is about intention and trying to tend and nurture the potential and self-worth of young people…all students, – NB: permission to use some of the language I heard throughout…. – some ratbags, some pains in the arse, some smart arses, some standouts and stars but mostly, all good kids. Who happen to be: from Porirua, from Samoa, from Tonga, Kiribati, Colombian, from the Phillipines, kiwis, some German blood, some English blood, Some Aussie, tik-tokers. BVC students….
And👏🏾You👏🏽Did👏🏼It!👏🏻
I know it was challenging.
I know you’re rightfully over it by Term 4 (you still looked it over it from the IG photos at Splashpad the next day 😆), but I wanted to say:
Take a moment to reflect, because what I saw delivered was what you set out to achieve. We designed the concept of it – but YOU thought of it, and YOU delivered it; together, and with your kids.
What I saw and heard on 6 December:
- You might have seen mistakes (as you occasionally cringed); I saw utter celebration. You may have felt fatigue; I saw incredible energy – from the kids, and from their families and community.
- In almost all the write ups on the stands the kids reflected on their childhood connections, and the effort they wanted to put in to celebrate that. That’s belonging and connection. Culture Identity 101 – achieved!
- The thought and production that went into the paintings, the photo collages, the food, the panikeke!!! (I had four different types and took a photo of the chocolate and pineapple recipe!) Those t-shirt designs were super cool and unique. True one offs!
- The performances from the kids was not what I would think is ‘traditional’, in the best way- their costume, their music choice felt like it was THEIR choice – not what they were told or expected to use.
- To get some hour+ of performance and uniform hand movement (especially the complexity for the girls) must’ve taken hours of time on their own, and time practicing together – without you cajoling them.
- They had to put their costumes and outfits together – probably with family. Their siblings would’ve seen them prepare – passing on the journey experience. One young brother in the audience was doing all the moves during the performance (see image below).
- There were 99 (I think) kids all performing!!! Which we know means preparing and working with 99 kids for at least the last 2 terms on choices and practice and mind-changing. Not to mention still teaching the curriculum 🤯
Maybe for the final celebratory event, kids do productions like that all the time. Perhaps all the student’s have a chance to perform something like that, or prepare food like that, or share their art like that on the regular. But it seemed like it might have been a bit special because it was about those kids and what they wanted to share.
I feel so privileged to have been part of this. It even made me think about my own cultural identity and what I confidently believe about myself, where I’m from and what makes me me. It’s nice to know part of my identity is never being able to have my eyes open in a photo 😑
Tao e umu haau ke moho.
Bake your oven until all the food is cooked. Niuean Proverb
Highlights from our final report
- Funding was received through the Pacific Education Innovation Fund.
- We worked with all 91 students, 84 Pacifica.
- For the funding our commitments were:
- Pacific learners and their families feel accepted and included.
- Pacific learners’ cultures, faith and beliefs are valued in education.
- The Pacific workforce is grown valued and supported.
We set out to achieve four outcomes:
Outcome 1: Students understand and engage with their cultural identity – Achieved: To a LARGE extent
The program, through its structure of T1: KELI (Tok. Explore, To dig), T2: FAATOFU (Sam. Immerse) T3: MA‘ANI (CI, Raro. Make something), T4: TAONAGA (Niue. Celebration, Feast, Party) provided a progressive structure for each student’s story and journey. Being able to say to students not just ‘what is your cultural identity?’ but ‘How do you feel about being you” or “As a [Pacific ethnicity] what is it like for you?.” For many it was a validation of inner thoughts that said “even though people don’t think so, I know I am”.
To highlight one student’s journey we have Student X. She shared that she was often told: “you’re not Samoan cos you don’t look like one.” Because of the conversation and agenda of the Program, she expressed she was interested to be amongst other students who were identifying similar positions of “not looking at how people expected to look”. The opportunity for Student X was to undertake a deep dive into what it means to ‘be’ for her, something she had been struggling with since Primary School. Her understanding and engagement through the Program activities and teacher support equipped her with approaches to openly discuss it at home and undertake interviews with others. She came across a Year 13 student undertaking and sharing a similar exploration and she used that as a comparison for her own experience. The form of her capture for the Term 4 event was through poetry that reflected her cultural identity.
Outcome 2: Students are equipped to undertake self-determined topics of inquiry
Achieved: To a MODERATE extent
The desire was to equip the students in Term 1 with skills and inquisitive approaches, but the reality was that significant teacher effort was required to build scaffolding for the students to focus their effort and hone in their thinking on a potentially wide ranging topic, ie. themselves. It was also realised that some of the fundamental skill sets required were absent or low – in particular research skills – while demonstrated by the teachers, we were unable to document and standardise across the 90 students. (We talk about recommendations to address this).
Each term the Core Team would meet to talk about the Term theme, intentions of the approach and the reality of what they were experiencing in the work with students. As a team different approaches emerged from the originally designed ones. For example, at the start we tried working with the students all together – that proved too chaotic. Then we worked by class with the same approach. But we felt the students weren’t fully benefiting from shared cross-conversation and exposure. Finally, an approach of rotation between the four teachers and different topics proved most successful.
Outcome 3: Students recognise different paths and collaborative approaches with peers and experts
Achieved: To a LARGE extent
The original intention with this outcome was that in Term 3, students split off into a ‘making’ path (to demonstrate their cultural identity journey at an event) or an ‘event-producing’ path (planning, organising and running the cultural journey sharing event). The event-producing event was just not feasible when we recognised the capability of the students was taking longer and required more teacher effort than we thought. That, coupled with the Program being too long (in recommendations we suggest a two-term run would be better) meant all students followed the same ‘making’ pathway.
That said, the use of, and exposure of students to many different experts, different places, different approaches, and experiencing different paths was extremely successful. It was important to the program that we engaged in not only Pacifica culture experts, but to emphasise local/Porirua experts and practitioners for the kids to see, learn from, relate to and aspire to. Part of this included travelling to different places and different events to observe and embrace cultural identity on show.
One example was when we utlised the artistic background of a BVC tuakana. He shared his work, his cultural connection in a sharing session with students. He directly spoke to stereotypes, perception, and own perceptions of Porirua and this opened different conversations and avenues for ‘making’ for students. The teachers themselves also role modelled with their own cultural identities to demonstrate pathways, and ways of sharing cultural expression – through food preparation, organising of students for the Polyfest, or music and performance.
Outcome 4: Student self-confidence has shifted positively and they have created and shared cultural content that tells their story
Achieved: To a LARGE extent
The culmination of the year was the celebratory event and showcase of what the student’s journey had been like, and resulted in. The form was visual, artistic, recipes, catering and a massive performance where the vast majority of students directly participated in – either through practice and/or on the night.
The event was held on 8 December 2024 in the evening and it ran from 5.45 to about 9pm. All the student’s families were invited. Numbers who turned up we’re between approximately between 100-200+. Catering was set for 400 – including the students and educators, and no-one left hungry.
For the lead up to the event itself, between Term 3 and 4 students made a variety of artefacts and cultural demonstrations of their journey: unique t-shirt deigns, stories, photo-boards, food preparation, traditional costume, visual arts, painting, small group performances, tattoo designs, speeches, short films. Each item was explained with the student’s explanation:
- What I/we have created
- What I/we did (explain the process)
- This shows my/our identity because….
- I/we are proud of our identity because…
Some of the quotes from attendees on the night:
- “I’m amazed! So good to see what the kids had provided”
- “I was caught off guard cos I didn’t expect to see our photos.” This parent was taken aback positively because her daughter had independently explored family photos and chose ones that had meaning and told her story.
- “I’m blown away by the performance”
Unintended outcomes
- Collaboration between the junior and senior school. Through the relationships of the Fa’avae teachers with colleagues in the senior school, and their awareness of the program a mutual beneficial opportunity for Seniors to teach and coach a performance occurred. One of the results of this conections was our students were invited to perform at the Senior Prize Giving and comments to the effect that Fa’avae was “just as good [as the Seniors], if not better”.
- The funding flexibility meant that the unexpected opportunity to see the local movie, Red, White and Brass as a perfect demonstration of the Program’s intent, was able to happen for all the students.
- Those students and experts who were not Pacifica were able to embrace, and participate fully in the program. Even lending an important counterpoint to the conversation about cultural identity when one doesn’t have the obvious richness of an island, or language, community or spiritual element to easily reference.
Recommendations
- The program could be repeated if:
- It was shorter. Four Terms was too long to maintain with the age of the students. Recommend the timing be across two terms.
- A foundational research skill set was built with the students before the focus became research for themselves.
- The teachers were supported with a dedicated co-ordinator role. While there was a Design Advice on the broad strokes of the program, activities, focus and session scoping the Teachers spent a lot of time, organising activities/materials, relationships and shaping activities to the realities of their schedules and the student capability, as well as delivering the program, and regroupin/g to reassess as the collective. With a coordinator role in place the Teachers could focus on delivery, and the coordinator could ensure consistency across the 4 teachers delivering.
“If not in the form of this program or similar, we need to do something like this with our students. We need to help our kids delve into and explore their identities and who they are more – because they need that sort of foundation/fa’avae when they move from being the majority cultures in school to potentially, the minority identity represented in the workforce.”
Teacher Comment
