Reaching kids who hate to write

Te Kahu Rolleston is a poet who mixes kapa haka with battle rap to get school kids hooked on language.

He’s delivering this year’s Read NZ Te Pou Muramura pānui in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.

Here, in this edited extract from that kōrero, Te Kahu explains the impact of his own high school years, and why his teaching style works for kids who hate writing.

 

We had a third form science teacher named Mr Cassidy. This was the first time I had a teacher who was Māori, but not in the Māori department. He noticed the class could learn a whole haka bracket, but not five elements of the periodic table.

He knew our ability to learn and remember information was fine, but nothing about what or how we were learning science seemed to connect. He turned up to class one day and said: “All right, put everything away, we’re trying something else.”

“I need you to learn this information,” he said to the class. “I know you can all learn, I’ve seen it first hand.” He continued to tell us that many ancient peoples in the world had things called mnemonic devices that use rhymes, rhythm, story, and other powerful oral traditions as tools to remember things.

He then told us to memorise some of the most outrageously average rhymes I had ever heard — even Dr Seuss would have been disappointed. Regardless, he was asking us to do something simple, achievable, and something we enjoyed doing . . . so we did it.

“One bun, two shoes, three tree, four door,” etc. Once we had memorised these ridiculous rhymes, he told us a series of stories to go with them.

One bun: “We all like a well-baked bun! The best sort of buns have cream in them, and do you know why? Because if you mix ethanol with water and shake the solution, the liquid will go creamy if there are lipids present. Lipids are fats, FYI,” he said.

I still, to this day, know how to do this emulsion test: Because my science teacher taught me a silly little rhyme, which reminded me of a silly story he told, which contained real, practical, scientific knowledge.

What this did for me was spark moments of reflection on something we all know but seem to forget. Haka, waiata tawhito/mōteatea, any sort of waiata/music, pūrākau/narrative, poetry, or oral tradition have always been used to hold and convey knowledge. It’s the reason my iwi knows about Tainui waka coming into the Tauranga harbour: we have a tauparapara that recalls it. Growing up, knowing the haka about Pukehinahina didn’t just mean I knew a haka, it meant I could recall all the information within that haka.

As a third form student, what was a lot more important to me, though, was the fact that the teacher had given me a fun way to memorise important information easily for tests by using rhymes and story. This meant practising for school tests also meant practising how to structure rhymes and fill them with information.

Te taura hāngai: Instead of changing you, we will change the assignment

The fifth form arrived. We had an English teacher who was tasked with getting us to memorise a speech from Macbeth. It’s not much of an exaggeration when I tell you that this teacher’s job may as well have been to extract fish oil from mountain boulders. Since our third form year, our class had a reputation for burning through English teachers like a bonfire does kindling and twigs. One term, we had four English teachers. Some teachers stopped teaching our class. Others left the school completely after their time with us.

Despite the impossible task that had been thrown her way, this teacher found a way to create a meaningful experience. She did something so very simple, but so very powerful. Instead of forcing us to fit the assignment, she changed the assignment to better fit us!

Instead of forcing us to memorise the language of Shakespeare and recite it, she took the time to explain to us what the kōrero was saying, phrase by phrase. We talked and laughed and discussed what Macbeth was saying. We joked about how odd some things sounded. The teacher then gave us the option to either memorise the speech as it was, or to rewrite each phrase in our own words and memorise that version to recite.

As a result, we gained a much better understanding of what the speech was saying. When we heard it being quoted, we could explain what particular parts meant in our own words, with a pūkana here and a haka action there to animate our kupu.

We were given space where we didn’t have to ignore who we were, or how we saw the world, to learn and engage with something new.

What this did for me was to give me hope that there was space in education for the way I preferred to engage with language.

Fast forward 20 years, and schools all around the country keep me extremely busy visiting and inspiring students to write. Actually, I believe inspiring students to write isn’t quite the correct term. What I try my best to do is show them the joy and safety I was able to find within language: a way to engage with writing that looked after my own mauri and mana as a whakamā writer.

One of my most memorable moments using te tukanga ako, this style of teaching, was at Ōtorohanga High School around 10 years ago.

The students had been learning about the New Zealand wars from local mana whenua pu kōrero. My job was to use this writing approach to support these students to create pieces as responses to these kōrero.

As they were listening to the history of the land and wars in their region, their role was to create pieces that they would perform in front of the community the following evening. I asked them to each make note of the five things they personally found most memorable as they listened to the history. We then worked on creating metaphors to explain those memorable notes. Then we constructed rhymes, onomatopoeia, and more, until they had the tools they needed to weave all these sentences into powerful poems.

Many of the students made it clear that they absolutely hated writing. However, I have a distinct memory of those students asking to stay in the library over the lunch break to continue writing. The teachers were absolutely stumped.

This is something that I have seen many times over the years I have been doing this mahi. When a person is shown a way of writing that is fun and accessible to them, they often want a chance to explore it further.

The following evening arrived, and the hall filled with students and community. The students delivered their poems in a spectacular fashion. The audience was in awe. One of the students rolled a giant roll of paper that looked like it had come straight out of a wharekai in the ‘90s, across the floor of the hall.

It was the initial petition for the New Zealand Wars to be taught in schools, led by the Ōtorohanga High School student Leah Bell. After witnessing the history conveyed in this way, the people present stood and began signing the petition.

I will always remember this as an example where, just like in the kapa haka world, creative writing, performance, history and social studies worked together as a vehicle to communicate something.

This is a huge mihi to Leah Bell, the students involved, and the English teacher, for the amazing change they were able to make for the whole country.

 

Te Kahu will deliver his pānui on Tuesday November 5 at the National Library auditorium in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.

 

Te Kahu Rolleston (Ngāi Te Rangi) is a spoken word poet and educator from Tauranga. His work honours his ancestors, the land, and the ongoing Māori struggles for tino rangatiratanga and socio-economic betterment. His poetry speaks to what it means to be Māori, combining mythology, history and modern politics. Te Kahu was the 2014 winner of The National Slam Poetry Competition, and in 2015 he attended The Banff Centre’s Indigenous Writing Programme alongside Witi Ihimaera.

E-Tangata, 2024