“What would it look like if we put Māori children at the centre?” asked Laures Park (Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Whānau a Apanui) of a colleague when she started her role of Matua Takawaenga at NZEI Te Riu Roa back in 1998. In many ways, this question is one that Park has been asking and answering all her life.
Park has recently returned from the Education International Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she was awarded the 2024 Mary Hatwood Futrell Human and Trade Union Rights Award for her leadership and dedication to the transformation of New Zealand’s education system so that it recognises and uplifts Māori students and teachers and those from other marginalised groups.
She describes winning the award as humbling – but also finds it interesting that internationally this recognition is more readily celebrated and seen as progressive than it might be here. “Internationally, we are seen to be so far ahead in our support of Māori but in reality, our situation is at threat.”
She also notes it wasn’t a one-person job. “This isn’t an accolade just for me. It’s an acknowledgment that this work is hard and someone’s got to front up, but it wasn’t just me that did it.” Community-building and participation is in Park’s bones.
“This isn’t an accolade just for me. It’s an acknowledgment that this work is hard and someone’s got to front up, but it wasn’t just me that did it.”
Growing up
Park grew up in Mourea, a rural area outside Rotorua, in a community based around three marae that were very connected. Her parents worked hard, so their children were expected to be very independent and resourceful. Park remembers many of the kaumatua who lived on the road to school would look out for them: she recalls grazing her knee one day and being taken in by a local kuia before being bandaged up and sent on her way. The school bus would leave from the main road for tamariki who were under seven, but the others had to walk the three kilometres or so to school.
Later, Park’s whānau moved to Ātiamuri and that was the first time she had a sense of being Māori, as the school was predominantly Pākehā.
“We didn’t know we were Māori. Then, at our new school, suddenly we stuck out and we knew we were different. Our relatives were there and we had the support of our community, but there was nothing in place at the school to support tamariki Māori.”
Park won a government scholarship in primary school to help her go to boarding school, so she left for Queen Victoria Māori Girls Boarding School in Tāmaki Makaurau. There, among others, Hoani Waititi was teaching and there was a te reo Māori teacher, but the methods were very colonial and not based on the interests or extension of the students’ ideas. Clothing and history were the main subject choices she remembers.
Entering the profession
After that, the tertiary options available to Park were nursing or teaching, so teachers’ college in Waikato was where she headed. Then she started her first teaching job at Glenview School in Porirua, staying with her sister in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Park could see right away that beyond teaching, her role needed to entail caring for tamariki in a practical way, as many of the whānau were living in near poverty.
There wasn’t any funding for behavioural support and in the mainstream, supporting tamariki Māori looked like supporting them to be there, and sometimes making sure they were fed and healthy. The education they needed was specific to their lives. As a result, Park began to run the “activity room” and to ask the tamariki what they really wanted to learn. Many wanted to learn to cook, write well or read better, and she tried her best to provide for them. She recalls her dad coming to help build a reading loft for the kids and put a double bed in, so they had a cosy place to read.
She figured out if she could teach the children to cook a good breakfast like bacon, sausages and eggs then that would help them learn.
She figured out if she could teach the children to cook a good breakfast like bacon, sausages and eggs then that would help them learn. “We would go down the road to the shops and buy the ingredients, and they would write up the activity, measure the ingredients – and so within that, their maths and literacy were in real-life activities.” She recalls it being a privilege working with the tamariki in this way. She describes it that she was caring for them, certainly not in charge of them. They felt safe enough to ask really honest and frank questions, and get into conversations about the way the world worked. “They were succeeding at skills that meant something and were really practical for them.”
From Glenview, Laures moved to Corinna School, also in Porirua, where she started as a teacher before becoming principal. It was vital to her that she stayed very much part of the curriculum planning to enable enrichment in the education of the tamariki. Starting a vertical classroom model that utilised the tuakana-teina model was part of that. Each term would focus on a new theme, chosen by the students, with activities that could work for all the tamariki.
She describes her role as principal as very hands-on: “I remember taking the kids to Picton, which was further away than many had been. We stayed at Waikawa Marae, and the kids were billeted – or ‘bulleted’ as they called it. One of the girls didn’t like the billeting experience because she had her own room and that was so foreign for her. I remember them drinking fresh cows’ milk and seeing oranges on trees and being blown away as those weren’t things they had seen before.”
“I remember them drinking fresh cows’ milk and seeing oranges on trees and being blown away as those weren’t things they had seen before.”
From Corinna, Park moved to be tumuaki at Newtown School in central Te Whanganui-a-Tara, and again felt the need to support the very diverse community, particularly the Māori and Pasifika tamariki, in her care. The school established a rumaki reo, a te reo Māori immersion classroom, and although funding was always an issue, Park fought for opportunities that were relevant to the tamariki. Many of these tamariki weren’t connected to their turangawaewae and had moved to the city with their whānau, so it was about meeting these children as urban Māori and how that looked and felt different to smaller communities. The school also had a strong Pasifika community and at that time there were very real challenges for those families to feel safe, so that was a big part of her role too.
The union – and furthering systemic transformation
Throughout her career, Park was a committed unionist. In 1998, she joined the staff of NZEI as Matua Takawaenga to focus on kaupapa Māori and international issues, and became the co-convenor for Te Rūnanga o ngā Kaimahi Māori o Aotearoa, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
“My role here at the union has evolved. When I started as Matua Takawaenga, I was the first wahine to take the role. I came straight from being the principal at Newtown. I did everything in my role as principal and I had to feel okay at this level with seeing things change slowly.
“Five years ago, I was fed up. I felt that teachers were working so hard without the change we needed. We see policies change, but they are not focussing on our Māori and Pasifika children and what they really need. One thing I believe in is following the interests and skills of our tamariki. That was when I said we need to put the children at the centre.”
We look back before we step forward, and that is certainly clear in Park’s mahi and views on the way forward in education. The “Mōku te Ao” premise came out of this thinking. Mōku te Ao is a Māori-first approach, based around eight pou, designed to empower NZEI Te Riu Roa to work towards system change.
“In Buenos Aires, our whole team introduced ourselves in te reo Māori, and this was really noticed. I believe the way forward is by all of us, Māori and tauiwi, upholding our reo.” She believes this is especially important in the current political climate.
“I believe that indigenous people around the world need a chance to talk about the issues unique to us. I went to a session on climate change in education, and spoke up for members from Tuvalu and Kiribati who raised the challenge of climate change in their homes. The facilitator asked them what the improvement could be. They sat in silence. I spoke up and said clearly, ‘Resources – from all of you that have caused this’. Well, I didn’t make many friends then.”
But that doesn’t deter Park. She isn’t afraid of the difficult conversations, especially when it involves centring indigenous children.
“I hope that what we’ve set up will be strong enough to continue. We need to be moving forward working together as Te Tiriti partners.”
“I hope that what we’ve set up will be strong enough to continue. We need to be moving forward working together as Te Tiriti partners.”
Park has a clear vision. “For our mokopuna Māori, I would hope that the pathway is so much easier in the future. It’s hard for whānau, and the education system needs to be centring the dreams of our tamariki Māori. [We should] clear the obstacles and let them be te reo-speaking astronauts, go to Harvard, or be great parents, able to cook beautiful meals for their children.”
There is no doubt that there are generations of tamariki out there who can not only feel they have been heard, centred, supported and advocated for by the mahi of Laures Park, but who can cook a mean brunch while they are at it. Ngā mihi maioha ki a koe e te toki.