Week Three

A week of full control completed with satisfaction but also joined by a head full of ideas, reflections and alterations to consider for next week. Throughout the week I had numerous challenges and celebrations with lessons which needed reflecting on and revisiting. But that is simply the life of a teacher; teaching, evaluating, planning and teaching again. Two personal goals which I have reflected on throughout the week are being connected to whanau and multicultural knowledge. Throughout the week I had many opportunities to consider these goals and question my practice.

Standard six of the graduating teacher standards states that teachers must develop positive relationships with learners and members of learning communities. Throughout this week I had a number of opportunities to interact with student whanau. Each morning a number of parents/grandparents bring their students to class. Over the week I made deliberate effort to connect with each person to discuss casually and also about their child. To begin it was quite uneasy but as the days went on the connections became easier and more natural. I was able to learn all about whanau concerns and considerations for their child each day. This would often be in regards to how the student is feeling and doing at home. It was really valuable to have these discussion and it showed me personally how important whanau to teacher connections are. A point which was further highlighted to me within this is the benefit of connecting with whanau right from the beginning even if it is awkward.
The topic for this term is globalisation so the plan is to each week look at a different country/culture and learn about about it’s differences. We began by looking at Maori culture this week and learning about some traditional crafts. When considering  Graduating Teacher Standards three my goal is to gain deeper multicultural knowledge of tikanga and te reo Maori. Throughout this week as a class we made a number of very cool things which are related to maori culture. It was encouraging to learn background information about some maori art forms and then teach them to my students. Then it was further encouraging to have students engaged in the learning by showing that they were interested asking questions and adding further information. It highlighted to me again the importance of connecting to the culture of my students in order to create a rich learning environment.