Keeping Up with Mrs Faalili

One of the many lockdown struggles with this group of boys has been trying to get them connected in their calls, by choice. Wanting to connect in. Each time I'd pop on their calls, there was only ever 1 or 2 of them connected. This has been ongoing, since we first went into lockdown.  You would've seen on a previous post that I had sent my group of boys an email in an attempt to connect in with them.  Today we got to catch up and how good it was to finally connect with them and just chill. We spent a small bit just talking about how home learning is going, the struggles etc and then spent the rest of it just listening and laughing to their stories.  Today reminded me that we, as educators need to be going the extra mile for our tamariki. It's not detailed in our job description but I believe that this is a way to break down barriers and build on our connections with our tamariki and whanau. Why should we go the extra mile? Because if we don't, who will? If we don't,...

So where are we up to?  After deciding that the project was going to be 'The Taste of the Pacific' we've spent the last 4 weeks getting our menu sorted, all our numbers for the food and working on a proposal letter, asking Mr Herlihy if we could use some of the school money. Unpacking the learning was the easy part for me - aligning the learning with their needs and expectations. What was tricky was establishing group expectations, purpose and attitudes. This was highlighted in my previous post about the Boys.  This is a screenshot of their working doc which they titled 'Food Pricing'  After deciding on the menu,  our sessions were looking at recipes (reading, listening). We had lots of talanoa about how we cook certain foods at home, and were able to draw connections to our own cultures. Two of the boys are ESOL learners, so to have them speak so openly and confidently was really a special moment.  Week 1 - Two columns: Food & ingredients Week 2 - Added in...