Te reo Māori teachers in 'game of tag, but you’re always it’

Tuesday, 14 September 2021

There are so few teachers available to meet the growing demand for te reo in schools. And, as often the only te reo Māori teacher on staff, the extra burdens are scaring away new teachers.

Being the sole te reo Māori teacher in a mainstream school can be a heavy burden to bear.

They are professional translators, counsellors, iwi and whānau liaisons, kapa haka tutors, unrecognised heads of departments (HOD), and cultural advisers. Those are just the unpaid expectations too.

Te reo Māori classes are filling up more each year, but momentum is stifled by critically low numbers of kaiako (teachers) to teach them.

Some schools have none and can offer only correspondence to ākonga (students). Most have just one. Daniel Hāpuku has been there.

Te reo Māori teacher Daniel Hāpuku says there is a heavy burden on the few teachers in his subject area in schools.

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Being the sounding board and only link between a school and te ao Māori (Māori world) is like “you’re playing a game of tag, but you’re always ‘it’”.

Hāpuku, right, now has Anaru Mikaere, left, on staff as another te reo Māori (and PE) teacher at Christchurch Boys’ High School, with te reo Māori students more than tripling in number recently.

The difficulties range from explaining tikanga (protocol) Māori to staff, helping co-ordinate tangi, and being responsible for liaising with iwi – often multibillion-dollar corporations.

“Could you imagine how hard this would be for a new graduate?”

Moving to Christchurch Boys’ High School in 2015, there were about 50 te reo Māōri students – not enough to create a fulltime job – but Hāpuku (Ngāti Kahungunu) was hired with a vision to grow the department.

This year, there are 185 ākonga – nine classes – enrolled in te reo as an optional subject – thought to be the most of any mainstream school in the South Island.

Anaru Mikaere started as a student teacher, then joined him on staff, easing the burden, and allowing collaboration without having to seek assistance from other schools.

Mikaere feels lucky to have Hāpuku’s support in his first teaching role, unlike other new graduates who have the responsibilities of an HOD without the recognition or pay, while trying to complete full teacher registration.

There are many te reo Māori teacher vacancies across the motu (country) because the “demands of the job scare a lot of people off”, he says.

“I’m unsure if I would still be a teacher if I didn’t have Daniel guiding me through.”

Other graduates tell Mikaere (Ngāti Manawa) about the lack of support they get from their school and senior leadership teams.

One was asked to arrange a haka and waiata to welcome a special guest, with no attempt made to allocate time for her and her students to prepare.

She was expected to stop teaching for a couple of weeks and sort it out during class time – “not really doable” while students undergo assessments.

Hāpuku says they are lucky enough to have their department, time and mahi recognised.

Schools are increasingly understanding the importance of prioritising te reo Māori, with more bicultural signage, pōwhiri (welcome ceremony) and mihi whakatau (welcoming speech), karakia (prayer) in assemblies, and at Christchurch Boys’, mentioning the iwi of ākonga as they cross the stage to receive awards.

New Zealand Principals' Federation chair Perry Rush says te reo Māori teachers either get burnt out and leave, or they get poached.

Its physical education department teaches kaupapa Māori by leading the teaching and learning of the school haka for all Year 9 students. The science and maths departments now teach with a kaupapa Māori lens, like exponential numbers for whakapapa (ancestry), and how DNA to Māori is and should be treated as tapu.

Without “support from the top”, “you feel like you’re only there to tick a box”, Mikaere says.

Not ‘given same mana’

The burden on the shoulders of the few fluent te reo Māori teachers usually ends with them leaving, Principals’ Federation president Perry Rush says.

“They get burnt out, or they get poached.”

At the time of writing, there were 54 kaiako Māori vacancies listed on the Education Gazette.

Bounced between the Ministry of Education and the Teaching Council, Stuff was eventually told no-one gathers statistics on how many te reo Māori teachers there are, or how many more will be needed to meet demands.

Can there be genuine government motivation to solve the issue without intel on the numbers?

There were nearly 34,000 more students learning te reo Māori in mainstream schools in 2020 as opposed to 2015, and nearly 3000 more Māori immersion students.

Te Akatea – Māori Principals' Association president Bruce Jepsen says it’s not safe for Māori high school seniors in Auckland to return to school.

But shortages still keep numbers low, in an education system that does not place te reo Māori in the same category as English, Aotearoa’s fellow official language.

Nearly 75 per cent of the total school population – 616,000 students in July 2020 – had no meaningful te reo Māori learning.

Of that number, 246,500 had no te reo Māori lessons at any level, and nearly 350,000 learned only basic words, greetings or songs.

Rush believes the ministry is not keen to make it a compulsory subject because it knows resources would not cope.

But there is a “pending crisis” if the Government fails to invest when the revival of the indigenous language is so strong.

“We have to move on from just the bare-bones basics. We have to be crossing the bridge to te ao Māori.”

Te Akatea (Māori Principals' Association) president Bruce Jepsen says te reo Māori being a tokenistic and superficial add-on, rather than a core subject like English, is discriminatory to tangata whenua.

“It's not given the same mana.”

What if you decided a child walking into school on day one would only ever be able to say simple greetings, count to 10, and name the colours, in English?

“Would that be enough?

It is not really a tiriti (treaty) with one language classified above the other, he says.

Systemic change needed

Māori teachers cross the bridge into the English world every day, and it had to go both ways. The best way is through language, Rush says.

He and Jepsen agree that “we invest in what we value”.

Rush believes incentives and advantages are needed for rangatahi (young people) to take up the task, which would be more effective than spending years investing in professional development of existing teachers.

Jepsen (Ngāti Tūwharetoa/Ngāti Raukawa) says there is no lack of willingness within schools, but “we're talking about systemic change”.

Changing legislation and the curriculum would cause a “ripple effect” of changes to initial teacher education, giving teachers good “breadth and depth” from the beginning.

Te Akatea is pushing for te reo Māori to become a core subject rather than an “other” language in the current curriculum review which began this year.

Every child should be funded to be able to become fluent in te reo Māori , especially since most tamariki Māori are taught in English-medium schools, Jepsen says.

They cannot do that when most are lucky to have one teacher for a school of hundreds.

“At the moment, it’s more hit-and-miss, actually, more miss.”

University of Canterbury College of Education lecturer Te Hurinui Karaka-Clarke says giving up a year to study is not affordable for many potential te reo Māori teachers.

Ministry student achievement deputy secretary Ellen MacGregor-Reid says te reo Māori is a taonga it is obligated to protect and promote.

Schools from early learning though to secondary can access support to improve their te reo Māori offerings, with the help of experts contracted through to 2024 under the Te Ahu o te Reo Māori initiative.

Recognising that identity, language and culture are critical elements of the success of Māori students, the Whakapiki i te Reo Māori professional learning programme supports early learning kaiako to improve their knowledge in a Māori-medium classroom.

It also has incentives, like the Māori Immersion Teacher Allowance (MITA) for kaiako teaching in Māori at least 21 per cent of the time. It steadily increased from 1757 grantees in 2016, to 2316 in 2020.

University of Canterbury lecturer Kay-Lee Jones says it is important school management support kaiako to integrate te reo Māori in the classroom.

But is this enough?

Changes within teacher training

Canterbury University College of Education senior lecturer Te Hurinui Clarke (Te Arawa/Ngāi Tahu) says feedback from potential Māori teachers was that “going into fulltime study was not an option” for those with whānau to support.

So the secondary teacher programme is changing from kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) only, to an online distance learning course too.

It also plans to launch training for Māori-medium teaching similar to what Massey University and Te Wānanga o Raukawa are doing, and offer a faster pathway to teaching for other te reo Māori speakers with teaching skills and experience such as kaiawhina (teacher aides).

Ten of this year’s 100 one-year graduate diploma secondary programme cohort were either first or second language-speaking te reo Māori undergraduate degree holders. He understands other training programmes to be similar.

“We’re hoping it will keep rising.”

He commends the ministry step to integrate more mātauranga (Māori knowledge) into NCEA subjects, as Hāpuku is seeing at Christchurch Boys’.

Unfortunately, that was likely to become another drain on existing Māori teachers to lead that for the whole school, he says.

Mikaere is proud to be part of the movement to revive te reo Māori.

Fellow lecturer Kay-Lee Jones says there is “a lot of heart” in the te reo Māori revival, and a noticeable increase in school-leavers starting teacher training more fluent than in the past.

In primary teacher training, which is Jones’ background, basic te reo Māori tuition is compulsory.

But how much they go on to offer in their classrooms is up to the “path and aroha” of individual kaiako.

“If leadership are rowing that waka, and it’s a really big deal, and they have developments in place, it’s a lot easier.”

Jones (Te Aitanga ā Māhaki, Ngāti Porou) also co-ordinates the Aumiri Pounamu programme helping kaiako upskill to move from English- to Māori-medium teaching. After a mainly Māori cohort in last year’s pilot, there were also many non-Māori this year.

“I think kaiako are busy, but many are prioritising te reo Māori.”

Clarke believes it will be a long process, but more kaiako Māori will sign up once the barriers are removed.

At the cusp of change

Colonisation affects every part of life for Māori, but Jepsen is passionate and hopeful about the revival of te reo being led by the education sector.

“It's never been more exciting to be a Māori leader in the education system.”

For Mikaere, the teacher gene is strong in his whānau. Acknowledging the important mahi in kura kaupapa (full immersion), he chose to help normalise tikanga and te reo Māori, and clear up misconceptions, in mainstream schools.

“We are beautiful, intelligent people who are rich in culture. This needs to be promoted through a mainstream lens, so we can change the narrative around Māori.”

The country is “at the cusp of social change in terms of reo Māori” and he wants to be part of the movement.

Māori grow up hearing negative assumptions and stereotypes about themselves and what they can achieve, he says.

“For a moment, I didn’t think I would amount to anything but, luckily for me, I had some pretty good mentors.”

To be that for rangatahi, especially so Māori rangatahi know their potential, is “what inspired me to become a teacher”.