Title slide: Developing local curriculum

Dr Ali Glasgow, Victoria University, facing camera

I take some of the things that I learned from my PhD because I looked at three language nests, as my case study settings. And it's, the environment can actually be developed so that it actually demonstrates, this is a Pacific place. So having our banana plants, having our weaving, having artifacts from around the Pacific, which when you walk in it's like, “Oh, I'm back home in a village”. Making this place a village, so teachers are committed to... and language, learning the phrases, learning the songs. Even if I'm not from the Pacific myself, making a dedicated commitment in my intentional teaching to bring in Pacific pedagogy and practices.

So it may be how I start the day off with a lotu or a prayer, because that's what would happen back home. And it may not be just about the Christian thing, it's about how we come together in this place, in a spiritual way. That's how I start my day off. Making sure that I look at who I have in my centre, particularly if I have Polynesian children and Pacific children. What are the communities they come from? And make sure that I have a lot of that evidenced in my programme. So I have their books. I use them as my experts. I look to my parents and say, “what more would you like?” “Can you come in?” “Can you show me how to make palusami?” “Can you show me how to scrape the coconut?” What are the things that children would be learning at home that I need to put in my programme here and make it really entrenched, you know, in their practice.

Phil Muir, Principal, Northcote Intermediate, Auckland, facing camera

So our local curriculum and our classroom curriculum, we're really blessed at the moment because we've got so much going on locally.

We've got a hugely, richly saturated bunch of local opportunities for us to explore. And each of the organisations doing those wants to connect with us as a school and they have connected with us, so we can readily explore local curriculum opportunities. It's a matter of giving teachers the confidence to say, “Yes, I'm going to work with this organisation and it's going to fit into our curriculum because it's our community”. So it's seeing what opportunities we've got that are real, that are happening now, that are meaningful and linking them in with our plans of learning. We’ve looked at pedagogy, we've looked at you know how we can make cross-curricular collaborative project-based learning happen, and that's something we're continuing to explore. We've got some good benchmarks set there. We're exploring more concepts with our, the DMIC Programme, and developing mathematical inquiry communities, which is something special too – which really looks at culturally responsive practice. So there's lots happening. Once again it boils down to connecting and engaging with your learners and giving your staff the confidence and the skillset to be able to make good things happen.