West Coast School Visits - Kokatahi Kowhaitirangi School

Kokatahi was a fabulous little school of 48 students about 20mins from the Hokitika Gorge.  Our visit began with a welcome from the whole school, who presented a mihi and songs to our group. The school is made up of predominantly pakeha students from farming families.  Students sang Waiata and the Principal presented a Mihi.  I was impressed with the effort gone into the songs and the mihi, made all the more special because the Principal was South African and not long in the school.

The school itself is in its second year of the Manaiakalani Outreach programme and the progress they have made over that time is phenomenal.  Students were confident and enthusiastic in showing us what they could do and revealed that they use a variety of apps in their learning.  One app that they shared was Aurasma an app they described as augmented reality.  Holding an ipad over a painting they created, a video clip of the student who created the painting popped up and it was of them saying their pepeha - relating to the painting.  

Students also shared their work via QR codes which were posted on the walls around the room.  This had me thinking about how teachers could use the QR code idea for collating evidence of student's rich assessment tasks.  

Visiting this small school gave me insight into what teaching is like in a rural setting.   Conversations with students and teachers was warm and open.  Learning about learning from their perspective, within a rural context, was really interesting.  Some of the students had never left the community they lived in.  Some of them had been to Auckland and were excited about the Sky Tower and Harbour Bridge.  When I mentioned that I was from a little school in Auckland of 230 students, students were amazed and 'woah' was the reaction I received.  I did wonder what students from Tamaki schools would think if we were to take then on a trip to the West Coast to see how these children lived and were schooled.  I'm sure they'd give a 'woah' reaction too.  I know that some schools in the Manaiakalani programme have blogging links with schools on the WC...my next goal is to hook up more of our classes with students from there too.