Blogpost #10 - Restate your inquiry question...

 Restate your inquiry question and your theory of action/chain of events

Inquiry Question: 

Can we make accelerated shifts in literacy through teaching Identity & Cultural Competencies?

Chain of events:

1. Planned our project (The PASHISKA WAY - A cultural experience to remember)
2. Unpack what learning will take place (Boys tasks: Write a proposal to Mr Herlihy explaining the project and asking for financial support, create invitations for whanau and Senior Syndicate teachers, create a menu featuring cultural dishes from each members ethnic background and write out the recipe/identify ingredients, create mash-up performance to perform on the day
3. Meet 3-4 times a week with the boys to follow-up on progress of the project
4. Launch/Host project in Week 9 of Term 3

Unfortunately, due to covid-19 and the nationwide lockdown, The PASHISHKA way project was put on hold.

Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention

• When meeting with the boys, plan what the following week would look like. Often I would make reflections and anecdotal notes in my planning that specified what we worked on and what our next steps were
• Student Voice - a powerful tool that kept the 'fire' or 'mana' of this project going. The boys were so engaged, they would remind me of meeting times. There was one day the boys really wanted to go to the library to find a Pacific recipes book to help them with decide on which dish was the easiest to make. This came up during maths learning and I didn't want to 'downplay' or 'ruin the moment'. So I took the class to the library (luckily, it was free) and continued with our learning in there while the boys tracked down their recipe book.
• Blogging & Teacher reflections

Identify informal and formal ways you are monitoring the effects of your changed practices/intervention on learner outcomes. 

Explain the reflections and tweaks you are making along the way

The biggest struggle for me right now is lockdown and getting hold of my PASHISKA boys. For the last couple of weeks of online learning, none of my target students have attended the calls. I have sent parents text messages and composed emails to my students, but still no response.

I am trying to stay positive, in hopes that I will get hold of the boys soon so we can plan a google meet call to check in on everyone and talanoa about a plan B for our project. Everything was slowly falling into place pre-lockdown. 

I have been in talanoa with Poto Faalili and Dorothy Apelu about their inquiries and the progress of it all. It seems we are all in a similar waka with our intervention coming to a stand still. We have  discussing ways on how we could try keep the 'engagement' and 'momemtum' going from our students.

One things for sure, we are not giving up! We are trying to reach out to our tamariki!

Lockdown Learning and the difficulties that come with it...

After our CoL PLG meeting last week, I couldn't help but think about my next steps for my CoL inquiry.

We're back to online learning and we as teachers know the impacts of how this can be difficult for some of our learners.

My target group a.k.a THE PASHISKA BOYS were so amped, so passionate and enthusiastic about our PASHISKA WAY project. So, to break it down, my intervention design was project based. This idea was initiated by myself, due to it being effective last year. The only difference is, my boys were planning everything this year.

The intervention was to launch the project in Week 9 where the boys would host their whanau, our classroom and our principals to what they call "THE PASHISKA WAY". The boys planned to use the last block of a Thursday afternoon (23rd September) to prepare an island feast for the guests and perform for them as a form of entertaining the guests while they enjoy their food. The performance was going to be a mash-up of cultural dances from the Cook Islands, Tonga and Aotearoa - where the boys were from.

Planning the intervention involved:

-the boys writing a proposal of their project to Mr Herlihy

-a letter asking for funding to Mr Herlihy (again)

-brainstorming what the day would look like

-researching recipes of what food to make

-writing a letter to parents/caregivers

-dance practices during lunch break

-meeting with myself x3 a week to share what they had come up with and discuss our next-steps.

Come Week 4 of this term, NZ goes into a nation-wide lockdown. The intervention was put on hold.

To keep the energy and motivation - I endeavoured to meet with the 6 boys online, separate to our class sessions. First meeting was meant to be yesterday via google meets. Only one student responded. It's disheartening because I know it's out of our control.

My goal is to try and meet with the boys online. Talanoa about ideas and ways we could continue the project. Could it still work? Is there a next step?

This intervention is driven by the learners, it's authentic and it allows the teacher to step aside and let the learners show their full potential and what they're capable of. These boys are not at the curriculum level they should be working on, but this project provided opportunities for the students to WRITE, BRAINSTORM, TALANOA, RESEARCH & PLAN something that was meaningful and valued by them.

A couple of years ago, I had real success with my group of boys I worked with for my CoL inquiry. The first time I met with the Pashiska boys last term, it only felt right to share my 2018 success story with them. I shared my presentation with them, showed them pieces of writing produced by those boys in the beginning of 2018 and at the end of 2018. I wish I had a camera to snap the reaction from the PASHISKA boys. This was how I hooked my target group in to my 2021 CoL inquiry.