Connecting schools and communities
Connecting schools and communities
Watch how teaching and playing K墨 o Rahi brought together a community.
Gill Bloxham, Director of Sport at Rutherford College and Play.Sport Activator, and Casey Redman, Play.Sport鈥檚 Activator at Sport Waitakere, sat in a room and together conceived the idea of an inter-school competition using the traditional M膩ori game of K墨 O Rahi.
Their aim? To strengthen links amongst their K膩hui Ako (Community of Learning), the nine schools located in the Te Atatu area in Auckland.
To do this, they engaged Matua Jeff Ruha and his students at Rutherford College鈥檚 Mahi-a-Toi Academy (a group of Year 12 and 13 students that explore opportunities for M膩ori students to achieve success as M膩ori) and designed a training programme and inter-school competition with their seven local primary schools.
The competition was planned around Matariki, providing the perfect alignment with a core curriculum focus area, and was a win-win-win for everyone involved.
Teachers at Rutherford Primary scheduled two one-hour sessions with their Year 5 and 6 Students over two weeks. The students of Mahi-a-Toi earned credits for delivering the training to the 700 primary school students. The primary school students benefited by learning tikanga M膩ori (M膩ori cultural protocol) and the physical components of the game from their older peers (Tuakana-Teina). The听Play.Sport听team worked with K墨 o Rahi T膩maki Makaurau, a Regional Sport Organisation for K墨 o Rahi, to ensure what听they were teaching was consistent and aligned with what was being taught across the region.
Then on 26 June 2019, the tournament was held at Rutherford College. The engagement was incredible: the primary school students who participated in the training and competition were enamoured by their older peers, and everyone walked away feeling charged and inspired by what had taken place.
As a result, Rutherford College has pledged to make the K墨 o Rahi tournament an annual event and to听integrate the two intermediate schools within the K膩hui Ako next year.
"It's a win-win. You have kids out there enjoying competition from primary schools and then you've got older kids really enjoying what they're contributing to the community."
