Interventions: Part 2

Introducing multilingual visuals, cultural practices, and inclusive resources is only the first step in the implementation their impact is just as important. In our school, we do this through a combination of classroom observations, participation tracking, and teacher feedback. Observations from team leaders help us see how students engage with visuals, Te Reo Māori, and New Zealand Sign Language, while tracking participation shows who is involved and who might need a little extra support and if they are valuable to learning.

Teacher feedback plays a key role too. Our staff are encouraged share what strategies are working well and highlight any challenges they notice, giving us a clear picture of what’s effective in real classroom settings. This will be more present and the end of the year when another survey is sent out. 

To keep everything fresh and meaningful, I have tried to review our resources and routines, ensuring materials remain accessible and engaging for learners. Reflective meetings and brief reports help us celebrate successes, address any gaps, and plan next steps. This ongoing process ensures that our focus on cultural capabilities isn’t just a one-off initiative or tokenistic, it's a sustainable, evolving part of school life. 

We will see how this goes and I will make adjustments if needed as the year progresses.

Interventions: Part 1

From the information gathered and my existing knowledge, I decided to make the intervention slow and gradual throughout the whole year to best support both teachers and learners. We already had resources and activities in place to support teachers during various language weeks, and these were expanded each year. While this created a sense of confidence during those weeks, it did not provide enough support throughout the rest of the year. So what could we do about this.....

Firstly, myself along with Speech and langauge therapists supplied teachers and classes with multilingual visuals that included English, Te Reo Māori, and New Zealand Sign Language, using the same symbols as our coreboards. This provided a clear and consistent starting point for teachers and learners. It helped create a cohesive environment where, even if you were not confident in Te Reo or sign language, you could refer to the visuals as guidance. This was particularly valuable for new teachers at Sommerville.

Secondly, we re-established a school Kapa Haka group for learners to join. There were no specific requirements to participate, and we have seen how much the learners enjoy it. It has also provided teachers with exposure to different cultures and encouraged collaboration between classes. This year marks the first combined special school cultural festival, in which the kapa haka group will perform. This supports cultural capabilites along with collaboration. In line with this, the learning languages team, which I led this year, created a school karakia. We collaborated with Ngāti Paoa to ensure an accurate translation in Te Reo Māori that reflected our school. The karakia was shared with teachers alongside a waiata, this was put to music so that the whole school could begin learning it together.

Lastly, we hold a whole school cultural festival each year. While this is not a new initiative, it remains an important way of celebrating all cultures in our school and fostering an inclusive environment.

All resources provided to staff have been stored in the shared drive for easy access and ongoing support. These resources will continue to grow as new materials are developed. Having a central bank of resources is particularly helpful for our teachers, allowing them to revisit materials whenever they need additional support.

Causal Chain

 

My causal chain focus on the thought process behind creating my inquiry focus and what my interventions are going to be.  

What is the literature saying. ….

During my research I focused on the book “Teaching to the North East” by Russell Bishop. This book was mesmerising. It completely changed my viewpoint on education and made me have so many questions. Why is it that there are still toxic environments in education where students face marginalisation every day? Even though we are getting better there is still a huge gap in education. 

In Teaching to the North-East, Russell Bishop challenges educators to move away from deficit thinking that views the languages, cultural perspectives, and prior knowledge of marginalised students as barriers to learning. Instead, he argues these should be celebrated and utilised as powerful assets in the classroom. Central to his approach is relational pedagogy, which emphasises that strong, caring relationships between teachers and students are not optional extras, but the very foundation of effective teaching. Bishop describes the “north-east quadrant” as the optimal space where teachers achieve both high relational engagement and high quality interactive pedagogy, resulting in meaningful and fair learning experiences for all. He encourages teachers to create classrooms that operate like extended families, where power is shared, students’ voices are legitimised, and learning is co-constructed around their lived experiences. Importantly, Bishop highlights the need for teachers to continually monitor the impact of their relationships and teaching practices, making responsive adjustments to ensure every student thrives (Bishop, R. (2019). Teaching to the North- East. NZCER Press).  

Without this we face segregation, students who do not want to come to school and whanau are disengaged. “All students have a cultural fund of knowledge” (2022, The Education Hub) in classrooms this is what should be used and celebrated. In a classroom there is no room for cultural assumptions. 

With this all in mind I have thought deeply about what intervention would be useful to our school and how to support not only teachers in the classroom but creating a sense of belonging for cultures at Sommerville.

Barriers we face

In New Zealand special schools, there are several barriers to building strong cultural capabilities. One main challenge is a lack of cultural understanding among staff. Some teachers may not be confident in using Māori language (te reo Māori) or following Māori customs (tikanga), which are important in New Zealand's education system. Without training and support, it can be hard for staff to include cultural practices in everyday learning.

Another barrier is communication. Students in special schools often have diverse needs, and it can be difficult to match teaching methods with both their learning needs and cultural background. Some students come from Māori or Pacific Island families, and their cultural values may be different from what schools usually focus on.

Lastly, resources can be a problem. We do not have enough staff, time, or cultural materials to fully support every student's identity.

To improve, we need more training, support, and strong partnerships with local communities. This will help create a learning environment where all cultures are welcomed and respected, this is trying to happen at Sommerville but it is a big job. 

Looking at these barriers I have come up with 3 hypotheses/ hunches;

They are, if I can support oversea trained teachers to gain more knowledge in te reo then they will be more confident in using it in their classes. If we are collaborative in our cultural practices it will create more engagement with our learners and if I create plans for teachers it will increase confidence for teachers to teach te reo and NZSL. We are wanting to create an inclusive and cohesive cultural school and this can only be done if all adults are on the same page, this is why my hunches are so. 

Next I am going to be looking into what the research says and how through this I can create an intervention for our school. 

 

Data, data and more data....

My first lot of data came from a survey sent out to all the teachers. I asked how confident teachers are in using te reo in the classroom, out of the results I received, no one was very confident with most teachers sitting at a 7 and a few people seeming to feel uneasy sitting at a 1 or 2.  

As this is compulsory in New Zealand, this is going to be my first focus and finding ways to support teachers in feeling more confident. 

During the survey I asked what is something that you need support with and the majority of teachers want support in adapting resources for diverse learners. It is important to understand that at Sommerville we have a huge range of abilities and it is important to not just support their cultural diversity but also the diversity in their needs. Along with this I have seen a need for support in building a culturally inclusive classroom. This I found interesting as I am sure that teachers are sometimes not even aware that they are being culturally inclusive, they just don’t know it yet. 

In this survey it was seen that there was a huge need to do more culturally inclusive activities in our school as well as PLD. This is going to be something that I look into and see how we can best support our learners to get them involved in different cultures though something like music, dance or food, not just once during our cultural festival but recurring for our learners, teachers and wider whanau. 

This is only the start! Stay updated as next we are going to be exploring what we can do and are doing to support teachers.

Where am I headed this year?

Throughout my few years at Somerville I have become interested in cultural capabilities and how to better support teachers around this. Last year I became the curriculum leader in learning languages and our team supported the school during language weeks to support classes with resources for everyone to learn about that culture. With the support of one of the speech and language therapist I have made bi-lingual visuals for every class to support our school and the learners, focusing on english (with coreboard visuals), te reo and NZSL. 

 Because of all of this the question I have chosen is: How can we strengthen practices among our staff to build confidence in developing our cultural capabilities? I chose this inquiry because I have a theory that many teachers are not confident in teaching and celebrating cultural diversity in classes. We have a few overseas trained teachers so they do not yet know te reo and NZSL and as these are important in New Zealand we want everyone to be confident in teaching basics in our school. I think it is important to provide teachers with resources to support their own learning and their students learning. 

 First off I am collecting data on how confident our teachers are at the start of the school year and where we think our next steps are for supporting culturally capable teachers in our school. 

 Watch this space.