Today I went skiing for the first time ever. Ok, I tried to go skiing once, when I was 13, and I fell riding the rope tow to the top of the bunny hill, couldn't get up, got mad and stomped off the hill. I set off this morning planning to prove to my 13 year old self that I could successfully navigate not only the rope tow but the bunny hill as well. The ski resort we went to is amazing and is supposed to have fabulous view, or so I'm told. It snowed all day today and we were in a cloud most of the day so I didn't see much of the view. However, everything was very quiet and peaceful and the chair lift seemed to be a magical ride to nowhere.




Here's the one time I could almost see the view.

I am proud to say that I not only survived the rope tow, I also survived the Magic Carpet, the chair lift and even graduated to the green run after lunch. The green run was a little scary as by the time we got there visibility was so low that my instructor would say "follow me" and after about three seconds I couldn't see where he, or any of the other members of my class, had gone to. But I made it down the hill and am afraid that I have acquired yet another expensive habit.


Triumph!

Let play time begin! We are finished with the academic portion of our trip (with the exception of one last school visit on Monday) and have safely arrived in Queenstown. Here's what I did on the way into town.



Although I spent a few minutes shaking my head and saying "I can't do this," once I jumped it was so calm and smooth I couldn't believe I had been nervous in the first place. Now I'm ready for the next scary thing. If you are interested in the physics of bungee jumping check this out.

For our last day in Christchurch we visited two schools. The first school, Discovery One, is a primary/middle school that operates on the principle that "children's passions should guide education." Basically, kids work on what they are interested in learning about and teachers help to guide them in that process. The principal was very charismatic and I could almost catch the vision (as well as see a number of Uni students succeeding there) but for the most part kids were running around, playing Yu-Gi-Oh, and not learning much. I sat with a five year old at tea time who let of the longest, loudest, juiciest fart I've heard in a long time. She looked up at me with a smile and said, "that was me." She then proceeded to point out all the boys in the room who are in love with her and want to kiss her. They must have been impressed with her farting.

Today we visited the office of the Ngai Tahu. The Ngai Tahu are the most populous South Island tribe and they were the first tribe to receive a settlement from the Waitangi Tribunal. The tribunal was set up to give legal teeth to the Treaty of Waitangi and to allow Maori tribes to receive apologies and symbolic restitution for the losses they have suffered since 1840. The tribunal is still actively hearing claims from a number of tribes. Because the Nagi Tahu are so numerous and received the first settlement they have done a lot of work to stop the loss of te reo Maori, especially their own particular dialect of the language. It has been interesting to see the wide diversity of Maori tribes as we have traveled through this country. I suspect it would be easy, if one didn't interact with many Maori people, to assume, like we do about American Indians in the U.S., that all tribes are the same. The truth is far more complex and the tribes vary according to geography, historical experiences, and contemporary needs. Here is a map of Maori tribes c. 1870.

While in Wellington, we visited two fantastic resources that I haven't had a chance to mention yet . The National Library of New Zealand has a large digital collection and many materials accessible online for teachers. The New Zealand Film Archive strives to collect all film recorded in New Zealand and makes it available for teachers in country. It also has short films and other interesting articles and exhibits online.

It occurred to me that I could post photos of the South Island rather than trying to describe the landscape.


The view from the road in front of my hotel.



View from my hotel room, 5:23 PM.


View from the Kaikoura lookout.

I am in Christchurch until the end of the week and then the academic portion of the trip comes to a close. After Christchurch we have two days in Queenstown to do tourist activities--right now I think I'm going to do a trip where you bike down a mountain into a canyon and then raft out of the canyon. Hopefully the sun will be shining next Sunday--it was below freezing in Queenstown yesterday so if it is sleeting next weekend I don't know how I'll feel about biking. After Queenstown we spend one night seeing the glaciers at Franz Joseph and then two nights in Arthur's Pass in the Sourthern Alps and then it is time to go home. I am ready to be how but am also amazed at home quickly the end of the trip is upon us.

On Saturday morning we crossed over to the South Island. Everyone promised up that the difference would be stunning, but I had no idea how immediate the change in geography would be. The South Island has mountains that run directly into the ocean so one can look out a window and see snow capped peaks as well as hear the crashing of waves. It is really quite stunning. We spent Saturday night in Kaikoura, a sea-side holiday village famous for whale watching. We woke up early on Sunday to go on a whale watching expedition with the Maori owned Whale Watch Kaikoura.

Sunrise Sunday morning.


We were not disappointed in the whale watching. We saw three sperm whales and a large pod of Dusky Dolphins as well as many interesting sea birds. Here is a photo of the tail of one of the whales as he dives to the bottom of the ocean for food. These whales have to eat a ton of food every day to keep up their body weight.

Last night we slept on the Waiwhetu marae. It dawned on me that I haven't included any photos of the whare (meeting house). This is the building where all important meetings (hui) take place and also where guests can come to be fed and sleep. The Waiwhetu marae has hosted Kofi Anan as well as our distinguished group of Fulbright scholars. Here is the entrance to the whare. At the top of the roof is a carving representing the ancestor that the house is named after. The carvings along the line of the roof are the arms of the ancestor, the door the mouth, and the window the eye. Here is a drawing that labels the parts of the whare.



Here is where we slept. Before supper (evening tea, served two hours after dinner) we had a lecture on the house and what the different carvings and weavings meant. Every carving, called poupou, represents an ancestor (at this particular house, made for many tribes to use, they are from all over New Zealand, in other houses they are just from the specific tribe that built the house). The carvings are interspersed with weaving, tukutuku, that tell stories. The carvings and weaving are bordered by kowhaiwhai paintings which are also highly symbolic. In order to carve, weave, or paint, a person has to be apprenticed to a master carver, weaver or painter and learn the proper way to do the work. All three activities are considered tapu (sacred and taboo at the same time).



After the lecture and evening tea, it started to feel a lot like a big slumber party. Cindy, Juan Carlos and I came up with a series of quiz questions for the group and hosted our own quiz night. The categories were Language and Literature (sample question: In what Shakespeare play would you hear the line "the quality of mercy is not strained"?), Music (sample question: In what decade did Prince drive his little red corvette?), Movies and TV (sample question: Who was asked to play Humphrey Bogart's role in Casablanca but turned it down), It's Trashtacular (sample question: How many times has J Lo been married), and New Zealand (sample question: What is an "ankle bitter"?). All the teams did the best in the trashtacular category, much to their great embarrassment.

The three quiz masters.

Sample quiz question answers: Merchant of Venice, 1980s, Ronald Reagan, 3, and a small child.

Yesterday we got to visit an amazing school outside of Wellington. He Huarahi Tamariki is a school for young parents with child care on site for the mothers (and occasionally fathers) who attend the school. New Zealand has a large correspondence school for kids who live in rural areas but it also can be accessed by students like these women who find it difficult to be served by a traditional school. The school provides teachers who work individually with students on their correspondence school curriculum and they have several parenting, computer, and fitness classes that they do all together. The school was an amazingly warm and welcoming community. One of the older students was teaching a dance class to the younger students when her 7 week old baby started fussing in the nursery. One of the child care workers came and got her to feed her daughter and another student stepped up to teach the dance class.

All the girls I talked to at the school were so grateful for the opportunity to be at the school. Most said that if they weren't at HHT they would have had to drop out of school to get a job and their children would be in day care. At HHT they can see their kids during morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, and if they are nursing they are allowed to feed their babies as much as necessary. The school also helps them negotiate the social welfare system in order to get the benefits they need to stay in school.

I spent most of the morning with Maiata, who has a nine month old daughter named Naria. Maiata was working through an English packet on reading unfamiliar texts and was very excited to have me sit down and help her. While we worked she told me about her daughter and what it meant to her to be at this school. We learned later from the principal of the school that many of the students are kicked out of their houses when they get pregnant or are abused by the fathers of their babies and the school helps them find housing and get restraining orders, etc. Before we left Maiata gave me a letter and a photo of Naria. In it she told me that Naria had been without a name for a week but she finally decided to name her after her younger sister who had died of cancer at the age of 3. The visit was very moving because while these girls have had such a hard life in so many ways, the school was a place of real hope for them and it was wonderful to get to be a part of that for the morning.

Me and Maiata.

This weekend involved a lot of time together on the bus. I have to admit that I can be a little cranky when I'm forced to spend large amounts of time in a confined place. This weekend was no exception.

We left Auckland early Saturday morning for the Otara Markets--we had been promised that these markets would be amazing and satisfy all of our souvenir shopping needs. Sadly this was the best thing I saw at the Otara Markets.



After the markets it was off to Rotorua, sight of amazing geothermal activity and home of The Fo. The Thermal Wonderland was pretty spooky to see (and to contemplate what it would have been like to be the first people to come upon it and wonder what on earth was going on). The Fo, on the other hand, was hard to shake. Anyone who has smelled hot springs before should have an idea what I am talking about but as far as I can tell there isn't a word in English to explain the reek that pervaded Rotorua. Chantel taught me the very useful Spanish word, fo, which can only be said as if you are spitting it out, to describe the smell.



Images of The Fo.

After a smelly night filled with shocking British television, we left early Sunday for a monster road trip to Wellington. We spent nine hours on and off the bus driving through very lovely country but it is possible that my previously mentioned crankiness might have interfered with my enjoyment of the day.

This is an image of Huka Falls on the Waikatu River. Apparently people kayak through this water. Tiffany, our tour guide, said it is great to see but there have been some fatalities.





Mt. Ruapehu, one of the many breath taking photo stops on our journey South.

Monday we got to start the day late which was such a treat. I slept in a little, went for a stroll until I found a good cafe, had a lovely long breakfast (French toast with bananas and bacon, not, as I thought, on the side, but both on top of the French toast), and then did a little shopping. We spent the afternoon at the Ministry of Education where I started to get a few answers to my questions about transformative pedagogy (although nothing satisfying yet). I keep hearing the same name, Russell Bishop, mentioned when I ask questions about changing pedagogy to meet the needs of Maori students and he is at Waikato University in Hamilton. Unfortunately, we aren't visiting Hamilton. During my last day in Auckland I met another Fulbright Scholar who is also at Waikato doing work on restorative justice in the schools. I’m looking forward to learning a little more about his work as well.

After our time at the Ministry of Education, we went to the US ambassador's residence for a cocktail reception. I've never met a US ambassador before so I was pretty impressed until I learned that he got the gig because his company gave $500,000 to W's election campaign. It was a lot like a normal party where you don't know a lot of people and have to make small talk, only this time I had to make small talk with people who use napkins that are embossed with the seal of the United States of America. We did all get our photo taken individually with the ambassador in front of a big American flag. And he gave us NZ/US flag lapel pins.


Me, Ann, Chantel, and Cindy at the ambassador's. Notice that we were only served clear beverages due, I assume, to the white carpet.


Me and the ambassador, Charles Swindels.

Tuesday we spent the morning learning about current political issues in New Zealand and then visited Parliament in the afternoon (for a good source on NZ current events visit stuff.co.nz). Some shocking facts about NZ government as best I understand them: New Zealand doesn't have a constitution. There is only one branch of government that includes both the legislature and the executive branch. As a result, from 1975 to 1984 the same man, Robert Muldoon, was both Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance. Because there is no constitution, the judiciary system has no authority to overturn decisions made by the legislative arm of the government. On the bright side, a politician can't raise more than $20,000 NZ for a campaign so MPs aren't beholden to corporations in the same way US politicians are.

Chantel, Darla, and I had a meeting with a woman from the Ministry of Education after our tour of parliament. As we have been visiting schools and hearing people from the MoE talk about the national curriculum, we have had a number of questions about what students read in literature classrooms that no one has really answered. New Zealand has a national curriculum but it is written in terms of learning outcomes rather than specific content that must be covered. This has meant some really weird things for language arts/literature classrooms.

To begin with, English falls under the curriculum area Language and Languages so is lumped in with any foreign language learning and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL, or ESL in the states). This lumping together creates problems for both English language instruction and other language instruction, as you can well imagine. From what I can tell from my conversation with the MoE today, English education (of the language arts variety) is much more focused on literacy than any meaningful experience with rich and diverse texts. It isn't until years 12 and 13 (11th and 12th grade) that the learning outcomes begin to talk about students experiencing a variety of meaningful texts. Shakespeare is the only compulsory author and he must be taught in year 13.

All of this focus on literacy is very well intentioned and focused towards kids who are not engaged in their schooling—the thinking is that if teachers work to find out what kids are interested in and structure their literacy education around those texts, the kids will be more engaged and successful. This all makes sense on one hand, but I think the exciting, and challenging, part of being an English teacher is finding a way to introduce texts that kids might never encounter but can still relate to if they are approached in the right manner. I also resent the assumption that in order for students to relate to a text is has to be easily accessible--that's why kids read books with teachers!