Definition
Subject / Aronga
Term
Curriculum
Resources
[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Vā
- Description: Examples of Vā in practice.
- Video Duration: 8 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/768791947?h=9c57f74d7b
- Transcript: So Vā for me means just having
So Vā for me means just having, like, a safe space. I often use my classroom as an example for this. I like to have a safe space within my classroom where all students feel like a sense of belonging, but also a space where relationships are really strong and really important.
In Tonga, it's about looking after connections, relationships, whether that's inside the nucleus, the family or community. And then there's our cultural practices that we all kind of partake in to help create that connection.
It's a very complex concept. There's many facets and layers to it. There's many types of vā, so. Vā between a student and a teacher is different to a vā between two students or between the teacher and a whānau.
It's the it's the care of that relationship between you as the teacher and the tamaiti.
It's really important because a lot of our kids cannot learn if you do not have a relationship. Especially our Pasifika students. We all know that, especially like it reflects the kumete. The thing that goes round and round. That if you give me respect, I give you respect in return. If you give me aroha, I give you aroha in return. It's a part of being together. It's unity. And that’s what a relationship is.
There’s like a misconception that the vā is ‘gotta respect your elders’. But there's also a level of mutual respect. And I think it's really important to build that safe space with our young Pasifika, so they can open up.
So it's not just for the Pasifika and the Māori kids, it can be for everybody. And if we all bind together in some way, we're all tied together and all our values and that, because we, we have different we all might have different values, but we all are trying to aspire to the same goal.
So for me, vā is looking after or nurturing the spaces, the connection in between firstly, yes, myself and others. But as I've grown both in my career and just in my personal life, I'm starting to realise it's also to look after and to nurture the words that depart my mouth and land on others and vice versa.
It’s a really important value for me, but it's also changing up that relationship where I'm not just a teacher to them. I like them to feel like that there is a relationship that is just as important to me when I'm relating to my students and their families. It's not “if you tick a box, you're going to nail it”, but also with the vā, like any relationship, there’s going to be ups and downs and nurturing that vā is like, how are you going to navigate through your ups and downs?
It’s the first thing we try and do is to try and create connection. So it's really hard for me to yeah to explain why it's important when it's so hard for me to understand why it isn't important. Like, why aren't we doing it all the time?
Being online is completely different, so it's almost like you have to really show your alofa in the sense to for parents to understand and to trust. It's that trust, and you have to build that relationship that way. To the extent it's really like being an aunty to every single Pasifika student and be like, “Okay, so you know, we've got school, you know, NCEA exams coming up, you know, what's the plan?” And the plan is, you know, I have to be their aunty sometimes rather than the teacher.
I think I’ve seen it through the senior leadership team. So here at school, I think they're in the learning process of really building that safe space, but also putting trust in us that have the cultural knowledge, to be able to teach them.
Building those those relationships pretty much from day one. You can yeah. It's amazing how much the kids will do for you.
We have a talanoa and that’s just an opportunity to clear the floor. The students will circle up and they will all talk about like what their progress is like in class and what they've struggled with. But they also use it to tell me or to correct me and say to me, “Look, Miss. You didn't really cover this very well”, and I take that on, not to heart, I’m like “Okay, cool.” And that helps me plan my lessons in response to what my students are needing. But those talanoas can also go way deeper. It doesn't necessarily just have to be in our class. They'll talk about things that they're having struggles with and you'll see other students supporting them and being like, “Oh, this is how I dealt with that”, or “This is how I” or “I could help you with this”. I've seen the real benefits of building a relationship with the parents as well, and nurturing the vā with the parents.
We do sort of an interview process. We try and do it similar to a job that you come in. You sit down with us and we sort of talk to not just the student, but their parents. We try and get those interviews to sort of begin that relationship with the families. And one of the things I do say a lot to them is “By the end of their year 12 year with me, I will know your kid better than you do. And so what I want to do is to able to open the door for the parents to be able to say, “Okay, I can call you in the morning and say, my son's having a bad day.” Cool, that's how I want to know. I want to be able to know that so that, okay, how do I deal with him when he comes into school? Sometimes it's just letting them know that they are good at something.
We tried to use it to disrupt the word ‘timetable’ or our concept of what a timetable is. So then we could learn to work differently in our spaces. We found the timetable was quite rigid, that how we were bound by time we were in a classroom. It didn't allow us to be fluid enough to shift and move into spaces and with each other as freely as we could or needed to be. So that's what we hoped introducing the concept of vā into our space would help us to do. That vā between, you know, English and social science and, you know, the student and the curriculum and the teacher and the curriculum and the teacher and the and the community, because we're trying to bring in that localised knowledge.
So it's always checking in every morning, making sure that I say hi to everybody as they walk through the door. It's noticing the changes between each person. Like there's always someone who's loud, there's always someone who's quiet. But when that changes, it’s how can I connect and check in and make sure they're okay type thing.
For me, the building is the easy part and it always has been. That's always been the easy part. Building a home’s easy, but building those relationships with those young ones and that that's that's the hardest thing you can do.
Vā is a superpower to be unlocked within our young Pasifika learners, because noone's ready, no one's ready for our Pacific young learners to realise their full potential.