Month: May 2020

Yes, Luke, if you’re a blind, outdoor pétanque player and you want to know specifically whether you and your group can play your sport on the headland above Mairangi Bay on Mother’s Day even if it rains you might not find an exact answer to your question in the recommendations – but you will find […]

‘Ka Haka: Empowering Māori performance’ You can take the girl out of the theatre but not theatre out of the girl. ‘Ka Haka: Empowering Performance’ brought together academics and artists worldwide to explore the whakapapa stored within Māori performance, both traditional and avant-garde. I’m totally committed to a bicultural society, one enriched by ti tiriti […]

Down and Dirty with the Treaty Piki Diamond, AUT University Piki Diamond’s workshop Down and Dirty with the Treaty has had more impact on me as an educator than anything I’ve engaged with in the past 10 years, so much so that I have attended the session four times. It worked for me because of […]

‘Disobedient Thinking’ Welby Ings, Auckland Town Hall Welby Ings ‘remains an outspoken critic of dehumanised and fragmented systems of learning.’ Me too. I had already connected with Ings as both artist and colleague when I experienced ‘Disobedient Thinking’. I felt him to be someone with whom I had a deep and intimate synergy. Both school […]

Mental Management Workshop: ‘Mind Your Head’ AUT University, August 2018 I presented ‘Mind Your Head: Improving sports performance through self-knowledge’, a discourse anchored in the notion that all sporting disciplines should be individualized, standards-based and values-driven at the AUT-hosted Mental Management Seminar ‘Mind Your Head’. Other presenters were: • Madonna Harris, Summer and Winter Olympics […]

Ta te tamariki tana mahi wawahi tahā. It is the job of the children to smash the calabash Theatre director Raymond Hawthorne was brutal. I took every criticism to heart. I offered my resignation. He seemed confused and asked why. I said ‘because you don’t like my work. I don’t want to let you down.’ […]

Hurihia to aroaro ki te ra tukuna to atarangi kia taka ki muri i a koe. Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. Throughout my time at AUT I have been encouraged to share my experience in classroom practice and my ideas for developing a contemporary pedagogy supporting difference in […]

I’m a woman. That means I break hard. And mend like a motherfucker; all sexy and full of heartbreakingly beautiful scars. Staceyann Chin Since 2006 I have been given many opportunities to share my journey as a transgender woman in ways that have influenced colleagues in their classroom practice particularly with students whose gender-identity, expression, […]

‘This stardust won’t settle, because none of us should settle.’ Jacinda Ardern ‘Leadership Principles & Practice’ was conceived by Professor Mark Orams, as an archetype following Jungian behavioural configurations, a collectively-inherited, unconscious, universally-present idea of how things should be, have been, and must always be. Recurring descriptive phrases include ‘patterns’, ‘standard examples’, ‘similar repeating traits’ […]

I’m working class. Dad’s WWII experiences made him a pacifist yet I joined the army where I spent the Vietnam War. Dad getting smashed in the waterfront strikes made me an activist. Mum was an orphan raised by nuns. I’m transgender, married to my same-sex partner, thirty years age difference, parents to Finn, a double […]