Rachael Bolger’s love for te reo Māori began in high school, hiding at the back of a room during ‘Poly Club’, too shy to join in on kapa haka as the only Pākehā. “I knew all the dances, and I knew all the waiata … but no I was too scared, and I’m not really a performer,” she laughs.
A couple of decades on and she’s now found her place behind the scenes, supporting kapa haka at Tawa Intermediate. And she’s taken it upon herself to grow her understanding of te reo Māori too and bring more of it into the kura.
“I feel like we need to teach te reo Māori in New Zealand schools and expect people to get better at it. So that it’s not just colours and numbers for your entire school journey, and you still don’t know them at the end of it.”
However, she says, the problem is there is very little in the way of training for teachers to grow their te reo Māori, and no resources to incorporate it into the classroom. “If the teachers themselves only know colours, numbers and greetings, then what more can they teach?”
So, every week Rachael heads to Te Wānanga o Aotearoa to study te reo Māori, a full-time course demanding over 30 hours of study on top of her already full-time job.
She’s not the only one heading back to class once school’s out. Emma Haves-Jonathan (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Awa) is determined to reclaim the language that was taken from her grandparents. Like so many of that generation, they were beaten for speaking te reo Māori at school.
Yet, despite it not being passed down, Emma has always felt a quiet burning desire to learn. “I’m so proud to be Māori … but it’s just the language, it’s just that one bit that I was missing out on.”
Similar to Rachael, it was during her teacher training three years ago that Emma decided to go all in with te reo Māori. After completing Te Ataarangi last year, she was then asked by Rachael to join her, and two other staff members from the school, at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.
“We’ve all gotten quite close, and we all kōrero Māori at school … it’s been great to have a little group of us.”
The school has a strong connection to local iwi, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, forged under previous principal Brendon Henderson. A tree planted out the front of the school, named Tūhoto, meaning to bind or connect, marks the school’s connection to local iwi Ngāti Toa, who received the land back in May 2022.
Tumuaki Prisca MacDonald says that at the invitation of Ngati Toa (the school was a pilot school in Te Hurihanganui – an iwi and Ministry of Education-led initiative looking at unpacking racism and bias) and developing culturally competent practice through the use of Poutama Pounamu. As part of this, the school engages in professional learning from Ngāti Toa, empowering teachers to weave Te Ao and te reo Māori into the school. However, supporting teachers to do that is becoming more difficult.
“It’s been quite challenging, especially in the current climate, to find te reo professional development that matches different needs,” she says. Since the Te Ahu o te Reo Māori programme was cut, opportunities for teachers to upskill in te reo Māori are slim.
“Rach and Emma are doing this under their own steam. It’s outside of school hours. It’s pretty phenomenal. But I do worry a little bit that they’ve taken on a lot on top of a full job,” Prisca says.
Emma admits that because of the big workload, she has to squeeze her mahi kāinga (homework) in on the weekends. “It can be really draining. And I’m always thinking, ‘Man, do I really want to do this?’, but I just think back to why I started in the first place. My ‘why’ is I just want to learn my language, I want to be connected with my language.”
Not only is she leading by example, but she gently encourages more te reo use by putting up new phrases around the school. She also leads a student leadership initiative for Māori students, called Te Rangatahi, where they learn te reo Māori, practice their pepehā and do fun activities.
Emma’s fighting spirit to further te reo Māori is encapsulated by her favourite whakataukī sitting on her desk: Kaua e mate wheke, me mate ururoa (Keep fighting, don’t give up easily).
If it was up to Rachael it wouldn’t need to be a fight. She wants te reo Māori made compulsory in schools, and for a requirement to be put in place that teachers achieve a certain level of proficiency, like teachers in Ireland with Irish. However, she says this needs to be backed up with resources, or a “one stop shop” of how teachers in mainstream schools can utilise te reo Māori.
In the meantime, she’s created her own personal resource, using sentence structures she’s learned, including simple questions like, ‘E hia ngā pene?’ (How many pens?) or ‘Kia hia ngā pene?’ (How many pens would you like?).
“I just want to teach my tamariki at least things that will set them up for the future, so that if they take this path in the future, it will be slightly easier for them,” Rachael says.
Outside of the classroom, it is her love of the metaphorical language, and the pursuit of justice that drives her. “This should be a country where you can go into a shop and ask for something in te reo Māori. There’s nowhere else that speaks te reo Māori in the world. And if it’s not going to be here, it’s not going to be anywhere. So we need to make it here.”
