“Ensuring that rangatahi have the knowledge, skills, agility and resilience they need is at the heart of Aotearoa New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery and its future. It’s a hugely exciting and demanding ask. Teachers need to be well supported and rewarded – invest in teachers, invest in Aotearoa,” says Melanie Webber, PPTA Te Wehengarua President. Melanie ...
Imagine coming to school and receiving each day a message from your Board thanking you for what you do accompanied by delectable coffee, chocolate, icecream and other treats? Well, that was the kind of week that staff at Taupo-nui-a-Tia College experienced earlier this year, as Omicron was breaking out all over the motu. Just like ...
If Jo Brunskill could wave a magic wand, she’d like the result to be the same as one in the movie, The Princess Bride, when Westley rolls down the hill, shouting ‘As you wish’. “Except in our case, Westley would be the Ministry of Education.” Jo, a former language teacher turned advisory officer, has plenty of ...
The challenges of how to begin engagement with mana whenua for the development of the new Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories curriculum was a hot topic at the recent inaugural national Networks of Expertise summit. Les Hoerara, Kaiatakawaenga at Teacher Development Aotearoa (TDA), told the summit participants they needed to think about how they would enable ...
A recent decision handed down in the Employment Court completely vindicates PPTA advice to members about their hours of work and when schools are not open for instruction. The case relates to a dispute that arose in 2012 when the then PPTA Te Wehengarua branch chair at Rodney College claimed actual and reasonable costs for ...
In the recent Navigating Leadership Hui for School Leaders, Education Minister Chris Hipkins talked about how somedays it feels like everything is on fire. Speaking to teachers at our conferences over the term break, it sounded like the entire term had been on fire, and that the first person to start promoting “I survived Term ...
Wellington’s Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa was host for the first time to the PPTA Te Wehengarua Māori Teachers’ Conference. More than 200 teachers filled the museum, on Wellington’s waterfront, for the 27th hui, appropriately themed ‘Kua tawhiti kē tō haerenga mai, kia kore e haere tonu. You’ve come too far, not to ...