Toolkit - The Hikairo Schema

 This toolkit was hosted by Erin Connolly who teaches in Greymouth.

Erin shared how she uses what she has learned about the Hikairo Schema. Her school has had impactful professional learning with authors Angus and Sonja McFarlane and she has used this resource to guide her own professional learning.

Erin uses he poutama - a cultural competency framework - to track and scaffold her practice. She says it is clear and easy to follow. This gives Erin a structured approach to improve cultural compentency. She shared how she looks at these with a colleague and reflects on next steps. Erin also shares her own learning goals with her students. Her current focus is huataki (see image below) and Erin talked about how she starts her lessons and includes pepeha and music to connect with her students and also ensures her online learning easy to follow and is reflective of 'us and where we are'. I thought that was an important comment prompting teachers to consider our students' learning sites - when we look at these can we tell our websites are from NZ schools? Does they relate to iwi? Do our class sites reflect us, who we are and where we are?

There are seven schema (huataki is one) which can be adpated for any part of the curriculum and 'when used together enriches inclusive teaching and learning strategies which are reciprocal and collaborative' (from Erin's slides). Each one has outcome and experience examples.

I really enjoyed hearing about Erin's own learning journey and admired how clearly she communicated her professional learning goals and her reflections on what support she would need, what her next steps were, why this was important and how it would impact positively on her students, school and community.