Enabling children as writers: Learning from Pacific expertise in education
Introduction/Whakataki
20 June 2023
This best evidence in action exemplar provides a window into the transformative work of poet, Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh, working collaboratively with former principal, Liz Horgan, and staff and students at St Joseph’s School, Otahuhu.
The Ministry of Education’s Reading Together® Project Manager (2011-2015), John Good, initiated and co-constructed a project to build on and expand the Writers in Schools programme with a group of Otahuhu Schools, all of which had been implementing Reading Together® Te Pānui Ngātahi.
Building on the student and family/whānau engagement through Reading Together®, a collaborative model was developed with the partners providing support and funding. The partners were the Writers in Schools programme, the National Library, the Otahuhu Community Library and the community of schools. The first year of implementation was 2015.
Each school had a selected children’s writer working with their students and teachers over several days, with a focus on the school community celebrating and publishing the students’ writing.
The videos in this exemplar – including the community celebration of the students’ writing – were filmed in 2016. The student’s poems were published by the school in “A Cloak of Poems”.
St Joseph’s School, Otahuhu
For over ten years, St Joseph’s had been successfully implementing Reading Together® Te Pānui Ngātahi, including through Samoan language workshops.
The Education Review Office reported that “the richness and diversity of the school community are highly valued and children’s languages and cultural identities are recognised and celebrated”.
St Joseph's School (Otahuhu) | Education Review Office (ero.govt.nz) 2018
Senior staff of St Joseph’s Otahuhu, at the time of filming, explained that ‘Our pathway into the writing programme was really through Reading Together®’.
A Cloak of Poems
In 2015, in the expanded Writers in Schools project, St Joseph’s worked with Lino Nelisi and published a book of the students’ stories, called “Our Stories”. In 2016 and 2017, Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh was the selected writer for St Joseph’s and the school published “A Cloak of Poems” in 2016 and “Taonga” in 2017.
Drawing upon Pacific expertise
In “A Cloak of Poems”, Dr Tusitala Marsh wrote “The students and teachers at St Joseph’s School, Otahuhu, ‘rock’! It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with the most open, inspiring and hungry minds of New Zealand’s next generation of thinkers, poets and writers. Ia manuia le Malaga St Joseph’s – may your ongoing journeys be blessed!”
In “Taonga”, Dr Tusitala Marsh wrote “As soon as I entered the gates at St Joseph’s School, Otahuhu, I saw poems everywhere. Poems in blue uniforms bouncing balls. Poems shouting and playing skipping games. Poems giggling behind cupped hands. Poems sitting on school benches, under trees, eating carrots. Poems smiling and waving to me. A poem is a way of seeing the world and being in it creatively. It’s a way of holding your palm up to the sun and seeing a map, the underside of a leaf, the laughter lines around your granddad’s eyes, or the spaghetti junction on the Southern Motorway. It’s always a privilege to work with St Joseph’s pupils. They already had the imagination and creativity and the words. Their teachers and I just helped them lay each bit out, like a big jigsaw puzzle, and piece together the best lines. This is what you’ll find in this book. The best lines from the best minds. Congratulations my fellow poems – you continue to inspire me!”
Dr Tusitala Marsh is a Poet and a Professor at the University of Auckland. She won the Commonwealth Poet Award in 2016 and was selected as Poet Laureate for Aotearoa New Zealand from 2017 to 2019. Dr Tusitala Marsh also established and coordinates Pasifika Poetry, an online hub celebrating the poetry of tagata o te moana nui, the peoples of the Pacific.
The New Zealand Poet Laureate blog: Super powers in South Auckland
Identity and Voice
as writers
readership/audience
- The early journey that St Joseph’s took in developing educationally powerful, high trust relationships with their parents and communities is explained in St Joseph's School Otahuhu | Education Counts
- There have been other examples of where a “Creative” has been associated with a school for a period of time as a “resident” or “visitor”, working with the students, staff and community to further valued outcomes.
A recent New Zealand example, with associated evaluations, is the “Creatives in Schools Programme”. In 2021, the Creatives in Schools Programme ran in 143 schools as it scaled up from the pilot of 34 schools in 2020. A very wide range of art forms was included.
Creatives in Schools engagements aimed to be of high-quality, in-depth (lasting for 100 contact hours over 8 to 20 weeks) and hands-on for students.
The Creatives in Schools Programme Evaluation Report Round 2 states (p4)“The Creatives in Schools Programme (the Programme) makes a worthwhile and valuable contribution to sharing knowledge and offering creative practices in schools. The Programme provides an important new avenue for student engagement and has a profound impact in supporting student journeys of self-discovery. A focus on wellbeing and mental health helped to engage and connect students in positive ways, in some instances re-engaging students with schools. This Programme has also made a positive difference to teachers and kaiako, creative practitioners, parents and whānau involved in it. Overall, we conclude that this project has the emerging hallmarks of a high-performing project in which the cross-agency working group should continue to invest.”
Read the Creatives in Schools Programme evaluations:
Oakden, J., & Spee, K. (2022). Creatives in schools programme evaluation report round 2, 2021. Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, The Ministry of Education.
Oakden, J., & Spee, K. (2021). Creatives in schools programme evaluation report round 1, November 2020. Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, The Ministry of Education.
Contact
Creatives in Schools provides funding of up to $17,000 per project that schools | kura will develop and implement with a partner artist or creative professional. More information on applications for 2024 projects will be provided in an upcoming bulletin to schools.
Any queries, contact creativesinschools@education.govt.nz.