Throughout my academic journey, essays have often felt like a challenge. However, my early experiences with storytelling, fueled by my mother reading fairytales to me, hold a significant place in my life.
Sitting around the table, listening to these stories, reading became a cherished part of my upbringing. Yet, it was the music, the gentle strumming of my dad’s guitar, that first stirred my desire to sing.
Surrounded by language, my father’s soft-spoken words contrasted with my grandfather’s broken English, a language foreign to my own. Despite this, my grandfather’s silenced voice, punished for speaking Te Reo Māori, ignited in me a newfound passion for learning and speaking our indigenous language.
Essays, despite their challenges, juxtapose against the oral traditions of my ancestors, who seldom wrote down their stories for others to read. So, how do I convey my story? I’ve always written from the heart, drawing from my experiences and beliefs, rooted in our unique cultural context.
“From the Inside, Out” underscores the deeply personal nature of culture—mine, irreplaceable and unyielding. Our cultural perspectives are deeply tied to our individual contexts, making it challenging to fit them under a universal umbrella.
This picture dictates what ‘from the inside, out’ means to me. Have control of the vehicle on a path which seems simple, but looking from the drivers seat, our destination is not set. However, the personification of From the Inside, out for me talks about revealing what I know from my experiences and using that as my vehicle of change or difference.
Ladson-Billings, (1995) reiterates the need for teacher training in order to prioritise culturally responsive teaching, but who trains us to be culturally responsive. After all, cultural responsiveness isn’t a one-size-fits-all task or tool. Understanding someone else’s interpretation requires first understanding our own identity. In a world of diverse perspectives, cultural responsiveness demands recognition of our unique selves and contexts.
In an essay it says, you need to show clarity and cohesion? Well if we had this we wouldn’t have all the raruraru around ‘The Treaty of Waitangi’. I speak with my heart, I also speak from my perspective and my upbringing in a family so full of ‘quirks’ that underpin the values we collectively grew up with. Does this post show the clarity and cohesion needed? I think it does, Cultural Responsive Practice, you’re next!
With the collaborative groups I’ve formed, surely we will be able to complete what needs to be done well for the purpose of educating and fulfilment.