Manaiakalani Cluster Teacher Only Day - Keynote Speaker

On the last day of term 1 we participated in the Manaiakalani Cluster Teacher Only Day held at Glen Taylor School.  

The keynote speaker was Dr Rae Si’ilata. She is the Associate Dean of Pasifika at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education and Social Work. Her presentation had strong provocations around upholding the development of languages remembering that we have diverse cultures in our classrooms. She spoke about bringing their world into the classroom and allowing them to be them, to be successful as them. 

points of note...

• Biliteracy - we should be adding English not replacing student's heritage language
• build from oracy to literacy to open up the linguistic space - Education Gazette article here
• power sharing in the classroom critical - students have rich heritages and cultural capital that can enrich our classes - allow them to bring them into the class so we can learn from them which shows we value them

"The culture of the child cannot enter the classroom

until it has first entered the consciousness of the teacher."

The presentation is full of thought provoking material for us as teachers when teaching literacy. Here is a  link to Dr Rae Si’ilata's presentation. There is a lot to digest in this presentation and I liked the way she connected to the High Leverage Practises from Woolf Fisher's research for The Manaiakalani Programme.

Her is an article with a bio of Dr Rae Si’ilata in this Education Central article.