Te P\u016btahi-a-Toi School of M\u0101ori Knowledge<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A te reo teacher for over two decades, Dr Darryn Joseph from Te P\u016btahi-a-Toi, the School of M\u0101ori Knowledge, is passionate about his work. \u2018I\u2019ve always loved language teaching and learning,\u2019 he said. \u2018The challenge is that people are usually a bit concerned when they begin learning te reo M\u0101ori, so my challenge is how to help them get over their initial nerves so that they can think \u201cI\u2019m safe enough to learn here\u201d. That\u2019s a massive thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018My lectures are run as workshops, which is very different. We play games and do bowls; I bring in grapes from my own vine and sometimes over Easter we\u2019ve had a \u201cshop\u201d with grapes and Easter eggs, and students have to speak M\u0101ori to get them. I\u2019ve developed a way of giving students about 15 phrases in one shot, by playing battleships with a phrasal grid, and instantly this creates a communicative situation where they try to beat the other person and don\u2019t get hung up on the pronunciation or the activity itself. It appeals to the visual learner, it\u2019s tactile because they\u2019re actually doing something, and it\u2019s aural as well because people are going, \u201cOh, what did you say?\u201d So, I\u2019ve tricked them into learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We also sing waiata, and make sure we know who wrote it, when, where, and what their iwi was, as well as learning the song. We use it to break up the lessons, because humans only have a limited attention span, and I think one of the faults of academic lecturing is that it\u2019s quite gruelling sitting for an hour and listening. My style is that if I can\u2019t change activities every 10 minutes then I\u2019m doing something wrong.\u2019 Dr Joseph now has a publishing contract to write a book of the approximately two hundred activities that he has designed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, he has developed a new course, Te Reo T\u014drangap\u016b: Political Te Reo, which combines linguistics, politics and sociology, to closely examine current M\u0101ori political issues. \u2018It\u2019s quite challenging for students because they haven\u2019t had the traditional language learner trajectory. In it, they follow conversations between two people \u2014 one is not so political and the other is quite political \u2014 and then they learn sentences, phrases and words, all to do with M\u0101ori politics.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Dr Joseph believes it is important for M\u0101ori academics to have an effect on their communities, as he does by fostering the next generation of te reo speakers. \u2018Don\u2019t get me wrong, I do like blue-sky research, it has its place, but I think if you are working in a M\u0101ori discipline, then it\u2019s almost an imperative that in some way it has practical utility in the community that you\u2019re in. I think with colonisation, and the current M\u0101ori deprivation, M\u0101ori academics have almost a moral obligation to make sure they service their community in some way.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr Joseph is also a prolific te reo author, having written 23 books. Originally employed by Massey to write a series for M\u0101ori immersion education, he wrote on topics ranging from how to compose a haka or interpret songs to how to write poetry in M\u0101ori. \u2018All of that was really rich fodder later on when I wanted to research and write my own creative writing books, and so that formed a really great platform,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In more recent years, he has moved into creative te reo writing, mainly young adult fiction. He has won several literary awards, including the Huia (now Pikihuia) Short Story Award twice and the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa award for Best M\u0101ori Writing for Children for a story called \u2018Hewa\u2019, which was based in an online fantasy game and framed around the question, \u2018What world would M\u0101ori children get carried away in?\u2019. He also wrote what he believes was the first science- fiction trilogy chapter books in M\u0101ori in 2006. Sometimes, however, inspiration is closer to home. \u2018My latest book took the basic idea of a teacher who loved teaching and wanted to give a student some advice, so I didn\u2019t have to go far to think about a teacher who loves teaching! I did it in a M\u0101ori way, which was taking all of the gods and the ancestors and giving advice through them about what to do. That came out this year and it\u2019s done very well. One of my principles of writing for children is that I never write down, I always write up and presume that my reader is smarter than me. I try to publish one thing a year, I just like what I\u2019m doing, and I\u2019ve got some good relationships with publishers who are pushing me along.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DR DARRYN JOSEPH Ng\u0101ti Maniapoto Te P\u016btahi-a-Toi School of M\u0101ori Knowledge A te reo teacher for over two decades, Dr Darryn Joseph from Te P\u016btahi-a-Toi, the School of M\u0101ori Knowledge, is passionate about his work. \u2018I\u2019ve always loved language teaching and learning,\u2019 he said. \u2018The challenge is that people are usually a bit concerned when … Continue reading The teacher who loves to teach<\/span>