While working in the Year 4/5 MLE Kete it was apparent that leadership skills and Tuakana/Teina relationships were areas that needed to be developed. A culture of caring, learning and leading were important features that would bring that whānau feeling into our learning community.
Meanwhile, several of the Year 1 students struggled to appropriately share their thoughts and feelings. They needed help and guidance from their older buddies.
These relationships have started to be built during buddy class learning and have been teacher driven in regards to modelling positive interactions between teaching staff and students.
I have also tried to incorporate play based learning in a semi structured format to help the younger students engage in their learning. Incorporating meaningful tasks, linked to learning intentions with a play based flavour can be challenging. It has however hugely increased the tuakana teina that I expected. The older students have started to show real emotions such as pride, enthusiasm and kindness while learning alongside the Year 1 students.
Students need to feel comfortable with you as their teacher before they embrace new learning or stepping out of their comfort zone to lead and learn with younger students. This specific skill set needs to develop their emotional view of themselves and self belief in their own leadership abilities.
We will continue our path together during this term and through out the year. Each step brings a pleasant surprise as relationships are formed and students begin to show that the culture of caring really does mean we are become one whānau and not just paddling alone in our own waka.
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