One of the most effective ways to engage tauira in learning and to get them invested in your learning programme is to create connection. Whakawhanaungatanga is the act of establishing links - relating to people through culturally or personally inclusive ways.
Even if you're not a regular feature in the same classroom and only have one opportunity to teach a particular cohort, your ability to connect to those tauira in the limited time you have is a chance to ensure they seek your support outside of the classroom. If they experience a connection with you and feel that you care, they will seek the support they need. Feeling supported is a critical factor in determining the success of Māori and Pasifika students.
Using humour and storytelling
Humour and/or storytelling are simple ways to break down barriers between tauira and kaiako, to bridge the distance between you standing at the front of the classroom, and the students sitting behind desks.
Storytelling
If you're not comfortable with using humour, using anecdotes is a great way to connect instant connection. Your tauira will see you as more than a professional guest. You will seem real, relatable, approachable. Keep your stories short so that they don't encroach on core content, and keep them within the context of the lesson.
Here's an example of succinct storytelling in an APA lesson:
When teaching tauira how to reference their own photos in PowerPoint presentations, I tell them that the photo in the APA guide is actually one I have taken myself. I say that the chicken in the photo is called Old Trousers and that she looks a bit like a rooster and thinks she is one. She will often crow, and hasn't worked out that laying eggs is part of her job. I sometimes find eggs in the grass as if they have fallen out of her wherever she happened to be standing.
Humour
The great thing about humour is that funny content is only a search engine away. You don't need to be a funny person yourself to entertain your tauira. I have a running theme in my lessons, which is funny lego pictures. I use them as examples (how to reference a royalty-free photograph for example), or to indicate activity/lesson success.
I might ask students at the end of an activity or lesson how they feel about meeting their learning objective; deliriously happy like this guy:
(Nik, 2019)
or frustrated and murderous like this guy:
(StockSnap, n.d.)
References
Nik. (2019). Benny with his Nintendo (3D printed NES) [Photograph]. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/l4ADb9OVqTY
StockSnap. (n.d.). [Lego knight stabbing shoe] [Photograph]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/robot-toy-action-figure-figure-2592439/
Using a consistent point of connection
Animals have universal appeal. I chose to feature my farmyard animals and their antics on a regular basis for each of my lessons. By the third or fourth lesson, students were asking after the animals and sharing stories about their own animals. They seemed to care about my pets, and by showing them a part of the life I lead, I instantly became more 3-dimensional to them; not simply an instructor who visits every now and then. I immediately broke down barriers between kaiako and tauira.
Here's some ways in which I used stories about my animals:
I used my chicken as a humorous aside to my researching effectively lesson, when I had a practice topic of 'Investigate the most popular child's toy ever made'. I tied it into the story of buying my first toy (a Princess Leia figurine), saying that I was still Princess Leia obsessed as an adult.
I use my animals as teaching tools. Here is one of my sheep, Woolly Wonka, being used as part of an APA practice activity:
