Relational Learning: Belonging and Play

1992 – With my Te Atarangi Peers

I am in Aotearoa, New Zealand, sitting in a group circle with more than 30 Māori peers. This is our first chance to speak English since our total immersion Māori language course began a week ago. It is also the one time we can share why we are here and how the week has gone. Since I am the only person who passes as white in the room I am excited, yet apprehensive, to introduce my Māori heritage so I might shed the Pakeha label (of European descent) I have worn all week. This feeling won’t last. The phrase check-your-privilege did not exist decades ago but within the hour I will get a life-changing lesson on privilege that will turn everything as I know it upside down.

My smug, educated self is excited to share with my peers how I want to improve my Māori pronunciation for interviews in a book I am working on. But as the conversation moves closer to me, I tune in to what my peers are saying. They are here because their children are coming home from Kōhanga Reo (Māori Kindergarten) assuming they can korero (talk) with their parents in the te reo, the language, of their ancestors. They are here because the elders who speak Māori in their communities deserve the assurance that the language won’t die with them. Suddenly, my book sounds so...academic. When it’s my turn to share I resist sharing the reasons I enrolled, aware of the ego-centredness of my motivations compared to the grounded-in-place and cultural reasons this community have come together to learn.

We move around the circle. The last person to speak is a guy in my learning team. He is the slowest learner I have ever spent time with. Shamefully, this is a challenge for me because the pedagogical approach of the course is committed to moving at the speed of the slowest learner. I am young, naive and a product of a meritocratic university system that has led me to believe that I am wasting hours of my day waiting for this guy to get his head around a concept in two hours that I can grasp in 20 minutes. As I wait for him to speak, I am bored, impatient and disengaged.

Yet, this story is not a pitch for ability groups or self-paced learning. It is the opposite, in fact.

Let’s stop and listen to what the guy, let’s call him Tama, has to say first. He is self-conscious as he stammers through the reasons he found himself in this class. He has returned to Aotearoa after being away for more than a decade. When he left, the fact he couldn’t speak Māori was okay, normal even. But things are different now. Tama is telling us that before he returns to his turangawaewae (the place where he belongs) on the East Cape he wants to learn how to respectfully greet his iwi (his tribe) in Māori. Everyone nods — because, on some level, Tama’s reason for being here is why we are all here.

Tama moves on to talk about his experience in my group. I listen to him describe how he dropped out of school the day he turned 15. He shares what it feels like, for the first time in his life, to be in a learning environment that is not leaving him behind. His voice cracks as he acknowledges that some people in his group are frustrated by having to wait for him. Then tears of gratitude come as he shares what it means to him that we are not running ahead without him.

Lisa Grocott