Season's Greetings: Looking forward - and back!

Looking forward to 2020.

Kia ora everyone

Here is my end-of-2019 Newsletter.

As 2019 draws to an end it's time to both reflect on the past year and signal to you all the new opportunities coming in 2020.  Thank you all for your continued interest in this work.

Online Courses Launch: 31 January 2020

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I am excited to be planning the shape and content of Ann Milne Online, which you have all received early information about. Check out the updated information and don't miss out on the 30% discounted price for Course 1 in January. My thanks to those of you who have already signed up! I'm looking forward to our journey together! Courses 2 and 3 begin in April 2020.

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I have books available!

Great Christmas gifts! I have some books available for posting directly to you without having to wait for overseas mail! Cost: $75 plus GST plus $5 postage - Total: $91.25. I can have these in the post to you within one day of receiving the payment in my bank account. Email me ann@annmilne.co.nz to order.

If you have purchased and read my book already, I'd really appreciate it if you could write a short review on Amazon  - go to the ‘write a customer review’ tab at the bottom of the Amazon page.

AmericaN EducationAL Research Association (AERA) Conference 2020

APRIL 17-21, 2020 | SAN FRANCISCO
I am attending this event, with my daughter, Haley, who is the principal of Kia Aroha College. We are coordinating a group of school leaders who are also keen to attend. Everyone will arrange their own travel and accommodation, but we will meet up there and help you navigate the huge programme, and also arrange critical, social justice school visits and meetings in San Francisco. If you are interested in this amazing PLD, email me ann@annmilne.co.nz for more information.

Looking back on 2019

2019 was a busy year! Thank you to everyone who attended keynotes and workshops, and to those schools and Communities of Learning/Kāhui Ako and other groups who invited me to work with you. I have travelled between Whangarei in the north, and Christchurch in the south, speaking to national, regional, and local groups at conferences, running workshop days with COL and individual schools, and working on longer contracts with Manurewa High School, with staff workshops at Massey University, with the Education team and community groups for Waikato Tainui, and was an "expert thought leader" for the Teaching Council's Give Nothing to Racism project.

A highlight was being a member of the Judging Panel for the Prime Minister's Education Excellence Awards between May and September and being able to hear about the innovative work being done in early childhood centres and schools across the country! All were winners I believe!

I am lucky to be working with 12 amazing principals in an appraisal/mentoring relationship, where we learn from each other! It was exciting to be able to bring them all together at Kia Aroha College in June hold our first combined workshop day where they could share and connect with each other.

Audience Poll

As a speaker, you always wonder whether you are reaching the audience, or if they are finding what you say relevant to their varied roles and responsibilities, so this year I decided to ask! Thanks to those of you who completed my online survey after six different keynotes and workshops. The majority of you said you had learned a great deal, were totally motivated to take action and had some definite ideas about where to start, a smaller number wanted to start but weren't quite sure where or how - those two groups made up over 85% of responses. That information has been really helpful, and was one factor in my decision to start Ann Milne Online.

WRITING

Writing is one of my favourite activities and I always wish I had more time to do it! There is another book lurking in the background somewhere, but in the meantime, I'll stick to shorter bursts! This year the blog posts that caught everyone's attention were:

I was invited to contribute a chapter to The SAGE International Handbook of Critical Pedagogies due for publication in March 2020, and have a critical curriculum paper to be published in the Australian Journal, Curriculum Perspectives also in 2020.

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I look forward to keeping in touch with you all next year.
I wish you and your whānau a safe, restful, and happy holiday break!

 Meri Kirihimete me ngā mihi o te tau hou ki a koutou katoa!






White-gaze centred judgements

White-gaze centred judgements

The following questions from a group of experienced principals were the catalyst for this post:

  1. How can schools who do nothing for their Maori learners receive a “Strong” judgement?

  2. Why do we bother with all of the work we do to deliver a culturally sustaining curriculum when all that matters to ERO and the MOE are literacy, numeracy and NCEA outcomes?

 One commented, “If that’s all they want us to do I’d rather they just said so. Throw out all the rhetoric about culture, language, and identity, and tell us we only want young people who can read and write. At least then we’d know, and we could just get on with it.”

…So, Chris Hipkins, Ministry of Education, Education Review Office, NZQA, Teaching Council, and most PLD providers who have jumped through the MOE accreditation hoops – let’s just agree that your primary focus is assimilation and then stop talking about Te Hurihanganui, Give Nothing to Racism, or addressing “ethnicity-related discrimination”, and your children’s well-being strategy, until you get your own houses in order, do your own PLD on privilege and supremacy, and stop modelling, in fact requiring of schools and teachers,  the very racism you purport to want to change!  

Those of us working hard to genuinely change our colonial system see right through you!

White Supremacy in our Classrooms

White Supremacy in our Classrooms

This week I will go out to give talks to a variety of groups—a school, principals, teachers, mana whenua, whānau, and a district health board, about the “white spaces” in our education system and our schools. The message is the same as the one I delivered in previous weeks, months, and years, with one major difference. This week we have been forced as a country, tragically, to face the evil of white supremacy.

 In the past 10 days, as we have come together to support and grieve with the Muslim community, other voices, far more powerful than mine,  have drawn the parallels in our history to counter the “this is not us” messages and to say emphatically, “this IS us”.

Swimming with Sharks

Swimming with Sharks

Two news items have caught my attention this week as we consider our perspectives on Waitangi Day and the Treaty. Firstly, the call by the NZ History Teachers' Association (NZHTA) to have our colonial history taught in schools…

The second item that had me thinking is not so obviously relevant to schools and teachers. As I watched the exposé of Australia’s banks and financial industry on TVNZ News last night I couldn’t help thinking that if we substituted schools for banks, and education system for financial industry, how apt would the Australian Royal Commission’s wide-ranging recommendations be? Just imagine if we became as agitated over education’s damage as we are now over banking behaviour:

Our Words are our Weapons

Our Words are our Weapons

The Warrior-Researchers of Kia Aroha College have been in the news lately, as my previous two blog posts have shown. This post is my Christmas koha (gift). It shares the video of the Warrior-Researchers’ keynote presentation to the NZARE Conference recently (scroll to the end of the post for the link).

It also answers a question I am asked regularly, by providing some context for the use of the word, “Warrior” in the research group’s name, and in the goal of Kia Aroha College,  “to develop Warrior Scholars” which the school defines as:

Young people, secure in their own identity, competent and confident in all aspects of their cultural world, critical agents for justice, equity and social change, with all the academic qualifications and cultural knowledge they need to go out and change the world.

So, why Warrior? The name came from two sources.

Now I'M the Headline!

Now I'M the Headline!

Why do we create a system where external assessment is actually unnecessary, then lament its loss and go looking for alternatives? Is this parental expectation, and some sort of high-stakes status contest, masquerading as “accountability”? What is wrong with us that makes us think that if young people are successful at something, particularly if they are brown, we should get worried about the task’s rigour and its credibility? Don’t we actually want more of our children to achieve, or are we OK with this only being some of our children?

More than a Headline

More than a Headline

And, right there, on the Herald’s Facebook page, the fork in the up-until-now positive pathway appeared. Down one path, were those who were in total agreement with the students’ findings, congratulating them on their courage and honesty.

Down the other path the racist trolls came out to play, taking their usual route, happy to denigrate young people, condescendingly confident in their absolute ignorance of the issue, and their “Whiteousness” (my word for the “White is right” brigade) regardless of the facts, the significant research, or the truth.

The battle lines were drawn.

Listening to what young people tell us!

Listening to what young people tell us!

At a recent keynote at Waihi College, to a full assembly hall, I was honoured to be introduced by Mikaira Wells, the Head Girl of the college and one of the impressive students I had met with during the day. With Mikaira's permission, I want to share her speech because I think it clearly articulates what students know, and what we often don't hear. 

Racism in schools? How dare we be surprised!

Racism in schools? How dare we be surprised!

After the release of the report, Education matters to me: Key insights, the issue of racism in schools was all over the news last week. Media headlines read: “Study finds ‘disturbing’ racism in NZ schools” (Newshub), “Students tell of racism in study of how they view the education system,” (Stuff) and “Māori, Pasifika kids reveal racism in schools,” (RadioNZ). Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft says that the children’s comments about the racism they encounter in schools were unsolicited, and were a surprise to interviewers.

Let's SEE this!

Congratulations Labour and our new coalition government! Finally, some hope for an end, or a complete relook, to the neoliberal agenda that has crippled education in New Zealand and continued to marginalise our Māori and Pasifika learners. Words are cheap. So LET'S SEE THIS …

Seeing your Words in Pictures!

How very cool is this! My thanks to Mary Brake at Reflection Graphics for the very clever interpretation of my uLearn17 Keynote - drawn live during the presentation! I love the fence! Is that pointy finger mine? I'm amazed at how much Mary has captured! Also check out the comprehensive live blog written by Aiono Manu Faaea-Semeatu. Thank you Manu! I consider myself very lucky to have you both interpreting this important message!

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Whose knowledge counts?

Fascinating international discussion this morning as part of a panel at the "centre table" in Teach for All's Global Learning Lab Virtual Roundtable event - "Growing Students as Leaders of a Better Future." What are the most important education outcomes for our youth... Content Skills and Knowledge, Mindsets and Dispositions, Life and Professional Skills, or Values and Purpose?  

That was a struggle for me! Which category do culture and cultural identity fit into? Are they skills and knowledge, or a mindset, or what we need for life, or are they about values, or should the development of a secure cultural identity be a major purpose of our education system? I would say YES to all those questions, but my biggest question is why do we have to "find" a place in our existing monocultural, mostly White, frameworks for culture, cultural norms, and cultural identity? Why aren't they explicit and not left to chance? While there were areas where we panel "experts" found agreement, there were plenty of places where we disagreed, and I was left hoping that this won't be more of the same, where we raise the issues, then file them in the too hard basket!

Thanks Teach for All for the invitation and the opportunity to participate. Today's roundtable was about which outcomes. Tomorrow, (Thurs 20 July in NZ) I'm at the table again, with a different panel, this time discussing how we get to those outcomes. Join in - 8.00-10.00am (NZ time) via Zoom - join the meeting with this link  https://teachforall.zoom.us/j/975545305 and jump in to the Chat as we go! Some tautoko would be great!

Also, check out the Resource Exchange on the Virtual Roundtable link above, for some great videos and resources to use in your classes and schools.