Waimata Primary School, on State Highway 2 just outside Waihī, will welcome Raelene Miller to the principal’s office in October, as she steps into the role for term four.
Raelene is currently the deputy principal at Waitakaruru School on the Hauraki Plains, where she has been teaching for seven years. While she will miss her current school, she said she’s looking forward to bringing her te ao Māori-focused teaching philosophy to Waimata.
“I tend to go three to five years in a school, and because a lot of what I do is come in to strengthen ao Māori or literacy, I generally go to schools that need support or help in those areas and then work alongside the teachers and the management and the community to build whatever needs building in those areas,” Raelene said.
Waimata School is a level three Māori immersion kura [school]. The school website states its aim to deliver a bi-cultural New Zealand curriculum to students, with the expectation that they will “walk comfortably in both worlds” and develop a “fluent understanding of language, process and tikanga”. Raelene said she is excited to work on that aspect of the school’s development.
“I understand Waimata is very much into outdoor education and they’re pretty keen to embrace or develop further learning in the environment… using your local land and people to learn from and in,” she said.
Raelene is also planning to focus on student well-being, emotional intelligence and bringing in new pedagogical philosophies around trauma-informed practice, with an eye to ensuring the work is developed through an ao Māori lens. First though, will be getting to know her new environment.
“My whole plan for next term is just to meet the kids, the whānau, the staff, and get to know everyone, form those relationships, connect with community and with iwi and stuff, and just start building relationships over there because I’m not from that area.”
Meanwhile, as she headed into her final weeks at Waitakaruru School, Raelene reflected on the legacy she has left there.
“It’s an amazing, humbling little school. I’ve been deputy principal for three years there now, and I was working with the [Hauraki] Kahui Ako as well in that time,” she said.
“We established kapa haka at the school, went to the Hauraki Festival for the first time in the 50-odd years that’s been running for, we’ve got a whānau hui going, we have an actual local school curriculum for ao Māori at our school… The kids can karakia, they can waiata, they can whaikōrero.”
Raelene said she was especially proud of the kura taiao programme developed with Hauraki Kahui Ako, a learning cluster of local schools.
“Myself and Carrie Taipari-Thorn from Kerepēhi [School], and her husband Frank Thorn, have run a one-day school where kids are learning in the environment. That’s from an ao Māori lens as well. We go out around Hauraki Gulf. We go up into the forest… The programme’s based around sustainability and guardianship or kaitiakitanga, looking after our environment and learning within our environment. That’s been pretty cool,” she said.
“Our kids absolutely loved it. One wrote a speech about it, about why kura taiao should be compulsory for every kid. It’s had quite an impact on her.”
