Duration: 3:29
Motu School principal Paul Cornwall explains the process they went through to setup a framework for Māori achieving success as Māori (MASAM). By creating a matrix the school and Board were able to carry out a self-review and identify areas for improvement. Their focus is on including a Māori perspective across the curriculum and in their approach to with engaging parents/whānau.
Trevor Bond, Blended e-Learning facilitator, CORE Education:
The major link between the eLPF and MASAM was because at the start of the BeL project we used the eLPF tool
and the schools were really impressed with how powerful it was as a self review tool. So as we were looking at this, the decision was made to use the same sort of structure for the MASAM framework.
Paul Cornwall - Principal, Motu School:
Trevor shared a matrix of Māori achieving success as Māori
with us, which then we looked at and personalised by going through and making it relative to us. And then, the next step was to place ourselves as teachers in the first part of the matrix, and then as our Board of Trustees in a separate section placed themselves as they saw themselves at this starting point.
Once we had the matrix, that involved several meetings with the Board of Trustees agreeing on the localised content and then agreeing on, or negotiating their position on the document, and as as a staff we did the same thing so we all then had a starting point. And just by simply doing that, that had created a shift in the way people were thinking about how the whole thing was delivered.
Once we’d plotted ourselves initially as a starting point that had meant having a fairly close look at ourselves and where to from here.
We’re being focused on this issue clearly from a teacher’s perspective, and when the understanding came that it needed to be addressed from a student’s perspective it all became way clearer what “as Māori” meant.
Having identified our position on the framework as a school and a Board that meant that we needed to consider the “as Māori component” in virtually everything that we did.
The simplest way to explain it is probably that it’s no longer a single lesson, it’s just intrinsic, it’s embedded in everything.
We figured that we needed to start small and deal with something that we could actually handle so we set ourselves a goal of saying Māori names correctly.
Part of our review process, we plotted ourselves on the matrix in yellow so that it was quite clear where we stood. And then 12 months later as a staff we’ve re-positioned ourselves in a different colour – green, so that it’s quite clear, and we’ve left the two colours side by side. So, we can see in some cases where we’ve moved on and in others where we’ve moved back.
We also targeted the areas that as staff we considered our weakest, we incorporated those into our appraisal so that could be measured separately as well.