Title slide: Valuing Pacific culture

Inside of Rev. Fitifiti Luatua’s house

Reverend Fitifiti Luatua, E.F.K.S Church, Christchurch

If you want to work with Pacific children you need to love them. The key is the person, the teacher, they need to love the children and they need to understand the children.

Reverend Fitifiti Luatua, E.F.K.S Church, Christchurch, facing camera

I remember being with the group that Tufulasi took to Samoa. I think they did the Pacific immersion in a village and one of the teachers was saying that that process that they did in merging with the cultures, living with the families and understanding how the children are brought up and how the family lives, eat and does their prayers. Everything that's connected with their life. That's when they started to understand, ‘Oh, they she she is health - had a different world altogether’. But it made - it allowed her to do her work well because that's when she had the heart for the - for the children. So I think that's first and foremost. They need to understand where the children come from.

Teachers with students in classrooms

They need to understand the family context. They need to understand the culture that, you know, provides a life to this yeah, to the children.

So when we talking about teachers and working with children from the Pacific, Asians, you name it; I think that's very important. You know you need to understand the cultural framework that provide that kind of understanding and the way they think and the way they do things.

Reverend Fitifiti Luatua, E.F.K.S Church, Christchurch, facing camera

Even with the dancings and all that...it is a lot of meaning in there. So, I think it's very important area to really look in if you really want to work with Pacific children and also with Asian children or whatever, where ever country they come from.

Crystal Tutapakore, Guidance Counsellor, Manurewa High School, Auckland, facing camera

I think listening more would be an awesome start. I know sometimes with our kids it's hard for them to feel confident, happy or proud to walk through doors, and that sometimes you know when they walk through the doors they've already got a label on them. So, just for our teachers to just, you know, not judge a book by its cover, just get to know the kids, cause when you break those barriers down, that's how we can engage more with our Pasifika especially our poly kids because they're pretty shy.

You know like in a new environment in unfamiliar territories, they're pretty shy, but when you break those barriers away they're pretty loud you know at the end of it. So yeah just listening, giving them time and space just to be them.