All full-time Te Aho O Te Kura Pounamu (Te Kura) ākonga have access to a web page called My Korowai. This appears as a “subject” on the home page of Te Kura’s online learning platform, but instead of learning activites it contains sections where ākonga can tell their kaiako about themselves, set and track goals, report on their offline learning, check in about their wellbeing, and more. This section helps kaiako and kaimanaaki (form teachers) build relationships with ākonga, especially those who are new to Te Kura. Often rangitahi (young people) who are not comfortable sharing much about themselves out loud are more comfortable writing their hopes, needs and obstacles into My Korowai for their kaiako to read. The Wellbeing Survey, a component of My Korowai which ākonga are encouraged to fill in each term, gives kaimanaaki an overview of their ākonga’s wellbeing over time and prompts them to check in if any issues are raised. Again, this is valuable because ākonga are more likely to feel comfortable writing about their struggles in My Korowai than telling an adult about them in conversation. Kaiako Catherine Anthony gives an example of a time where a 14 year old expressed suicidal ideation in the Wellbeing Survey, allowing her kaimanaaki to check in and connect her with appropriate support. In a regular school, where there are rarely regular 1:1 check-ins about wellbeing, this may never have been raised and the school might not have known that the ākonga was struggling until her situation was much worse. 

The ākonga appreciate My Korowai, too. 18-year-old Sophie describes being pleasantly surprised to see “a lot of sections in it about your wellbeing” because “I never really got that sort of experience at school where people actually like, wanted to know how we were… it feels really personal and it’s really nice to have people to share that sort of thing with, who you can trust. So I really enjoy using that.” Her fellow ākonga Sam and Miriam both highlight that My Korowai is also useful for updating your kaiako if you are working on a long assignment that they won’t see until it reaches a certain submittable checkpoint. In Miriam’s words, “It can help you to show your teachers that you’re actually getting stuff done even if you’re taking a while to submit it, because with some assessments… it doesn’t really show the work until the end. So with My Korowai it helps you say, hey, I’m doing this, I’m on track.” This relieves stress for ākonga because they know that their effort is acknowledged. 18-year-old Dylan describes how the Wellbeing Survey pushed him to self-reflect in a way that he doesn’t tend to do on his own. “I’m not very good with emotions…filling it out was, I wouldn’t say emotional, but a little eye-opening to who I really was.”

There is currently a focus at Te Kura on further developing and refining My Korowai since it has not only led to a lot of valuable kōrero (conversation) about wellbeing but has expanded how attendance is viewed by allowing ākonga to record learning done outside of the D2L platform. Te Kura updates My Korowai frequently, aiming to make it more accessible and relevant. Recent additions include content that is tailored more specifically to age groups, a more user-friendly wellbeing survey, and more reo Māori and conceptual links to te ao Māori throughout.

Te Kura recognises that, in a primarily online learning environment, there is an increased need for pastoral support and deliberate time spent on connection. While all Te Kura ākonga receive this from their kaimanaaki the most vulnerable ākonga also work with kaiāwhina, non-teaching staff whose sole role is mentoring and pastoral support. Kaiāwhina took off at Te Kura as a result of Te Kura 400 (TK400), which was a fixed term programme run for a cohort of 270 Te Kura ākonga in Tāmaki Makaurau between October 2020 and April 2021. The purpose was to provide additional tautoko (support) in response to the pandemic, but the programme brought about so much positive change that Te Kura has chosen to carry some of its features, such as kaiāwhina, into the future. 

The purpose of kaiāwhina is to give ākonga a supportive adult who is unrelated to their learning programme and whose main focus is ākonga engagement and wellbeing. Initially, this role was brought in to help disengaged ākonga change their perspective on school: since TK400 was run specifically for ākonga who had become disengaged with their learning, it was crucial for Te Kura to find out what the barriers had been for these ākonga and either break them down or make sure that ākonga were supported as well as possible to overcome them. All of the incoming ākonga had had negative experiences with education, meaning that they had little or no trust for schools in general. Therefore Te Kura decided to begin by providing trustworthy, supportive adults within the school who could focus first on building relationships with the ākonga. 

Catherine Anthony was the TK400 project lead and continues to manage kaiāwhina, who were invited to stay on after the project to support engagement and wellbeing for ākonga flagged as vulnerable. In her words, “it is particularly important to have someone within the school who they connect with, who they trust and who they will be able to be honest with if there is a problem, like if their laptop breaks.” There was, and still is, a focus on hiring kaiāwhina who are approachable, empathetic, and, where possible, from the same communities as the ākonga. “It makes a difference,” says Catherine, “that many of the Māori and Pasifika kaiāwhina live in the actual communities where the students do and can understand the students on that level. They serve as role-models for the students. But overall there isn’t really a noticeable difference between Māori and Pasifika kaiāwhina and others as we deliberately hired kaiāwhina who had experience at working in a cultural responsive way, empathy, good people skills and ability to build relationships and meet students and families where they were at.”

Anthony describes how the kaiāwhina enable ākonga and their whānau to communicate with Te Kura more easily: “The families and students share more information and open up to the kaiāwhina in a way they sometimes can’t to some of the teachers. They are able to admit if they are struggling or if they don't understand something. Kaiāwhina improve engagement because they are so good at forming relationships, and so sensitive to the complex family backgrounds and challenges facing many of our families, that the [initially reluctant] students do end up coming along [to synchronous learning opportunities].” The result of kaiāwhina support is not just an increase in attendance to synchronous sessions but an increase in ākonga confidence. The ākonga know that someone at their school is looking out for them and believes in them, which helps them believe in themselves. The fact that kaiāwhina make a point of getting to know whānau makes a difference as well: whānau are informed about what their tamariki (children) are working towards and empowered to support them at home, plus they have someone at Te Kura to confide in if issues at home are becoming barriers to learning or if they themselves are struggling with Te Kura systems. Kaiāwhina Rita points out that this extra support and the wellbeing boost that it provides impacts so much more than ākonga engagement and performance. She says, “their wellbeing affects everything: their wairua, and their tinana, and whānau. Most of all it affects their connection to their turangawaewae.” Rita introduced the practice of doing wellbeing check-ins with ākonga based on Te Whare Tapa Rima as a culturally sustaining way of seeing which ākonga may need some extra support and staying aware of the bigger picture in terms of what the ākonga are experiencing. 

Catherine describes how when kaiāwhina were first used in TK400, the impact was massive. Most TK400 ākonga had felt unsupported at their previous schools, in part because when they initially stopped engaging with their education there had been no follow-up. Their mainstream schools did not generally have the resources to contact ākonga every time they missed a lesson. At Te Kura, on the other hand, kaiāwhina often check in before lessons to remind ākonga and help them get prepared to attend, and if ākonga are missing lessons their kaiāwhina prioritise sitting down with them to figure out what the barriers are and how to overcome them. Kaiāwhina also spend time helping ākonga and their whānau get comfortable with Te Kura’s D2L site and other online resources when they first enrol, so that they can confidently navigate their mahi (work). Most importantly, kaiāwhina focus on helping ākonga, many of whom came to Te Kura because of social anxiety, build their social confidence. Kaiāwhina Leilani loves pepeha as a tool to start conversation with a group because the pressure of public speaking is lessened by the excitement of connection. She describes how ākonga are reluctant to speak until one of them discovers that someone else present shares an element of their background, at which point they become eager to share and to discover the ways in which they are connected. Her goal is to get ākonga speaking in front of each other confidently so that they can move comfortably into other situations in life that require speaking to a group, such as a job interview. “My personal focus is on trying to grow them as young people in society, become critical thinkers, become responsible…and so we talk about things like gender, racism, all things under the sun. Because if we’re not having a talanoa, a kōrero (conversation)… where else are they going to find it?” The ākonga appreciate this support. 18-year old Dylan describes his kaiāwhina as “very helpful… they teach me a lot more than I need to know, they are always open to questions… they come back very quickly, that I know from experience. … I’ve texted them at like five o’clock and they’ve come back very quickly with information that I needed.” He also describes how they “help us build the team, get closer to each other…for the first [group project] we had a big group lunch, that was very nice and we got some credits for it as well, they snuck them in. It was very fun.” 

Overall, the impact of kaiāwhina on ākonga wellbeing was so noticeable within the TK400 programme that Te Kura has continued to employ more and more kaiāwhina across Aotearoa to work specifically with vulnerable ākonga. Although the ways in which kaiāwhina work vary regionally,  they are having a visible impact across Te Kura in terms of supporting ākonga who have had negative experiences at mainstream schools to regain confidence and motivation for learning. Te Kura’s strategy of increasing pastoral support when a hybrid learning programme is mainly delivered remotely is highly effective for promoting ākonga wellbeing and making sure that a sense of connection and community is not lost when learning is rarely taking place on-site. This could be a model for other schools as we move into a future where on-site learning is less consistently the norm. 

It’s also important to note that the whole Te Kura setup is affirming for ākonga. Sophie, aged 18, describes how she came to Te Kura because of an elite ballet training schedule but stayed on “because I really enjoyed the personal teaching and learning, because I didn’t learn very well in a big group… I find it easier to concentrate if there’s a smaller group of us.” Dylan also thinks that face-to-face schools could learn from Te Kura when it comes to getting to know ākonga on an individual level. “Mainly when you’re in a face to face school, they don’t really address you, they address everyone.” He mentions that at his previous school, issues like bullying generally went unresolved. “When something like abuse happened, it didn’t get fixed, or mental health problems… but here it’s one-on-one, every time. They know what’s happening. They know what’s going on and they help to the best of their ability, which is really nice.”