Who are we without partnerships?

We are coming to the end of our term 3 pilot programme - Whakaraupō (The harbour of raupo). It has been wonderful exploring marine life from dual worldviews.

Materia, our Kaiako offered us her Te Ao Māori perspective by sharing and a beautiful tātai, as teaching us about reciprocal relationships with others and the natural world.

Nancy, a long term yachtie and marine biologist shared her western science perspective and knowledge of the seascape, food chain, and tides.

By offering dual perspectives, we are offering our ākonga| learners multiple worldviews and showing them that science is all around us.

We were also fortunate to partner with @Blue Cradle (an ocean literacy organisation) and @Pōhatu Penguins (who raise awareness about the korora/ penguin). Both organisations came and gave us a wonderful informative session on these tiny korora that stand at 30cm tall! We learnt about the few pairs left in Whakaraupō and discussed the possibility of how we could help with these nesting boxes we made.

One child exclaimed incredulously, "Wow! This is so cool... ya mean, we get to start a colony for these penguins?!"

We may well. We are going to see what the options are in continuing this project.

We could not have done any of this, however, without the aroha and manakitanga from Andrea and Paul from @Maanaki Mai, who generously helped with transportations to and from the ferry.

Bringing in collaborators from our community extends our tamariki critical thinking, learning and wellbeing, as well as caring for our marine seascape - Whakaraupō - as Kaitiaki. Thank you all to who brought this learning together.