Powhiri & Kmart

Powhiri & Kmart

So there I was at K Mart standing in front of a rack of black trousers. Heart beating and mind racing. No, not at the bargain prices or the lack of natural fibres, but at the what they represented. A powhiri. A powhiri for a new school that is finally welcomiing ākonga and whānau. The doors opening on a new dawn after a long three months of planning, relationship building and thinking.

A powhiri that has involved a lot of planning by a lot of people. It has involved me engaging with kapahaka – for those who know my kapa, think blind, erratic octopus meets overcited tabby cat. It has involved starting a new life in a different city – one in which I though I never wanted to live in again. It tied me again to a familiar path of opening a school, which if you comb through the past posts of this intermittently written blog, holds many ghosts, passions and fears. A powhiri which has pushed me to put fingers to keyboard and commit to a public exploration of how I feel about what I do – something I have been reluctant to do at this kura so far.

Why now? The act of welcoming the community to breathe life into what has been a theretical exercise has pushed me to again examine what it is I do as a teacher and the personal journey that has, since I left off writing this blog, been a long exercise in finding inspiration and energy in my mahi. I think I have finally found it again.

Since my return to New Zealand schools I had been wanting a way to channel my ever growing frustration and desire to find a better way to do things schoolwise for Māori. A paper in indigenous education was the first try. I became known as the ‘angry guy’. Angry at the marginalisation of indigenous peoples at home and around the world. I railed at what I was reading and analysing and left the university to drive home fizzing with knowledge but with no outlet.

At my old school I found comfort in my colleagues, but this jarred with the journey in the Cook Islands and the knowledge I was discovering through study. Here too, at my old school, I became stroppy. Stroppy, sometimes in a measured, evidence driven, team building and strategic way. Ready to challenge the leadership and colleagues with their perceptions of Māori and Pasifika students and teachers. Stoppy, also in a frustrated, angry rant kind of way, with a broken heart as we watched students struggle against the system. At the end of it all, it is the individuals who give life to the theories and statistics and it became increasingly difficult to watch this played out in a visceral way. Harder and harder to sit with whānau and colleagues and feel helpless and angry.

The opportunity arose to try again. Try to start something new. Again. I wondered if I really had it in me after Ormiston and the Cooks. Was I just shifting off – again? The conditions seemed right though. An underprivileged community. A Māori and Pasifika community. This was an opportunity that felt like it would continue my own professional journey. A friend’s phrase resonated with me ‘ you were made for times such as this’, admittedly, she had last said this at Denny’s when we had oredered too much food, but it was too much to resist (much like the chicken wings). So I took the lunge and moved to Christchurch.

The last two months have forced me to reconsider myself, profesionally and personally. The funny thng is I knew this was going to happen and I felt confident that I was ready to roll with it; overly confident. Given my past experience,I didn’t expect what has happened over the last three months.

I didn’t expect to be so defensive and to have the monkeys on my shoulder poked and prodded. I didn’t expect to meet a school culture that was so open and comfortable with who they were. I didn’t expect to be so valued for who I am. I certainly didn’t expect to believe it. The most difficult thing was the most personal, being valued as Māori.

It has always been a deeply introspective journey, one that has been forced into my professional life and one that has been the most painful and most rewarding part of my career. I came from an environment where I had to be strong, assertive, pushed and pulled out of my comfort zone, isolated and had built incredibly tight-knit bonds with those around me who were in a simialr position. Then to suddenly be in a place where I could be myself, learn about myself, see a place for me and so many other Māori educators was something that I found shocking, difficult and I didn’t know how to react. It tumbled out embarrasingly one day and I made a decision to let it all out with my colleagues publicly, choosing to return form hiding in a toilet to blubber in a room filled with people. It was a turningn point, a vulnerable one that let others know the impact they were having, though they may not have understood what the tears meant. It has continued with learning about the rohe I am in and building a shared understanidng of Te Ao Māori at our kura and with colleagues who have a sense of purpose to work with my people, our ākonga. I trust that my community will grow me, protect me and value who I am.

Yet, it has taken me until now to recover from the sense of loss and fatigue that comes with leaving my home in Tamaki Makaurau, with all that had come to be – a deep sense of belonging, whānau, friends and a deeply loved life. The move and the new job was taxing and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was barely keeping my head above water. I felt, too, this was reflected in my actions, for the first time in my professional life I needed to find distance from my colleagues and I struggled to process thoughts and information. I was slow. I was grumpy when I knew I shouldn’t be. I was emotional, when I had long learnt to wall this away from my colleagues. I wasn’t myself or who I wanted to be.

With the distance of a fantastic trip overseas with the greatest of friends, I was able to find the mental and emotional space I needed to process all of this. So now, after two short weeks of hectic preparation, planning and physically preparing to open the doors I feel more energised then I was able to feel when I began last year.

I am ready. I am proud of the people who will be standing with me when I inevitably fuck up my haka powhiri. They are a group of people who may laugh with me, but who will also encourage me, persist with me and be with me shoulder to shoulder (or even on top of my shoulders...)

So, even though I decided not buy that new pair of ‘powhiri pants’, I am ready. Ready, knowing where I come from, came from and ready to take the next mistimed, out of tune step. Tu meke!