Hoea rā te waka nei.

"Are you Māori?" my student asked while we sat trouble shooting together on one of those funky new MLE seats that allowed us to have a close korero side by side. "No," I replied. "But you know so much!" he posed. I wish! Kaore au i te mohio nui. I know enough, for now, to help you and encourage you, that's all. He iti tōku reo. The truth is, I mostly learn alongside you. Ako.

We were discussing their current inquiry assignment 'Ngā Waka o Aotearoa' for the Te Reo Extension class I run at our kura. He will soon be leaving our kura and heading on to the bigger pond of education, and this year he took the challenge, as a pākehā, of stepping into our Te Reo Extension class with little background knowledge himself.  We are doing a brief inquiry on the whakapapa of the waka that landed on our beautiful Aotearoa, so those that have a waka in their mihi can extend their knowledge and those that don't can learn about the great kaupapa behind them.

Hoea rā te waka nei. Hoea ki te pae.  Paddle the canoe. Paddle to the horizon.

This year I am using a blended learning classroom to help support the 31 tamariki in my Te Reo Extension class. They range from year 1 to year 6 of a wide range of Te Reo knowledge and made up mostly of our Māori tamariki and a few non-Māori who have joined after getting a taste of it from being in our kapa haka group. Each experienced senior, our tuakana rangatira, has a year 1 or 2 as a teina. They go to their class to get them if they forget to come, they sit them on their lap and dote on them in such a lovely way it's one of those caring leadership skills that cannot happen in a homogenous (age) learning environment. Tuakana, teina.

We meet once a week for one hour in the school library, so digital tools have become indispensable to make our classroom mobile. The TV on wheels, the BYOD capability of my senior kids, the tools like a Blendspace board for our main resources, and a Google Classroom and GAFE that are enabling us to communicate and curate our other resources.

Kahoot has proven their favourite way to keep up  maintenance of past topics and some are creating their own quizzes as part of their knowledge construction this time around. Others have opted to collect ideas on Google Slides, their books and one group is working secretively because "we want to surprise you." All engaged, all motivated, all collaborating.

Hoea rā te waka nei. Hoea ki te pae.

We're using an iterative agile design thinking model to learn while creating. They have chosen their groups and their kaupapa. I'm trialling a Kanban board to keep track of who's doing what and to keep track of deadlines for presentations. The rationale for choosing agile design is that it's flexible enough for me to manage at this stage.

After having just celebrated Matariki in our kura and looking to Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, my ākonga's question spoke so much about how we, as kaiako, can help inspire and support our tamariki to sail into the world with a steadfast love of Te Reo me Tikanga Māori, te taonga o Aotearoa.

Hoea rā te waka nei. Hoea ki te pai.

Ākina Te Reo