Cultural Competency with Whenua iti

On Wednesday 2nd, the Within School Teachers took part in a stunning piece of professional development with Lara Hania and Michael Elkington.
Michael Elkington – Kaiarahi - has been designing and delivering culturally focused EOTC, local curriculum programmes for 20 years. Michael leads the Whenua Iti Outdoors secondary Manaaki Tāpoi (cultural tourism) programme and Waka Ama Journeys.  

Lara Hania draws on 30 years experience as an educator working across early childhood, primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors. She has been facilitating cultural competency workshops for over a decade, and is wholely comitted to equitable and thriving outcomes for rangatahi Māori. She currently works at Whenua Iti Outdoors and also as a bilingual teacher in Ngā Mana Kākano o Te Wairepo at Victory Primary school. Lara is a Storyteller. She is Pākehā, Mother to three Rangatahi with Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, and Te Ātiawa whakapapa.

Over the course of the afternoon, Lara and Mike took the WST through a fascinating journey of the history of our region and the impact that colonisation had on Motueka and surrounds.  They were joined by Callum, who introduced some important aspects of tikanga and great advice on te reo speaking.

We will share more about this mahi in the coming weeks as we look to work with Whenua iti in making this PLD available to our whole Kahui Ako

Ngā mihi nui to Lara, Mike, Callum, Mark and the team at Whenua iti.