A kindergarten

The parents at our kindergarten had recently completed a term evaluation of our programme. Among other things, a few parent responses indicated that there was some congestion occurring at the main doorway that serves as the entrance and exit of the kindergarten.

During this time, the teaching staff had been involved in professional development that assisted our centre to implement bicultural practices in our programme. Teachers had learned that this included the everyday things that occurred in the environment as much as celebrating significant cultural events.

Looking at our entranceway through this bicultural-practice lens, we planned a review that asked: "To what extent does our entranceway reflect our bicultural heritage?"

Entranceway review

The review involved our teachers, in consultation with our parent committee members.

We decided to ask whānau and local iwi about the history of the area. (Our committee president facilitated this.) We also decided to use the information we had from our term evaluations as a prompt for discussion. As well, over the next term, we took every opportunity to discuss the children's perspectives on the entranceway with them. (Teachers undertook to record this information.)

Over the term, our discussions with children took place in groups and with individuals informally. When children were changing, putting their shoes away, or getting their lunchboxes, we took the opportunity to ask them about the most appropriate places for putting their things. These were considered in relation to what we now understood to be appropriate bicultural practice, such as separating hats and shoes from food. Feedback was shared at each staff meeting and summarised for analysis.

Local iwi and whānau sourced information about the local legends for us. We learned about a local legend of the 3 whales that we in turn shared with the children through story, drama and art experiences. Whānau invited children, teachers, and families to visit their property in a location where the mountains that represent the 3 whales are visible. A grandmother shared her stories about the significance of the property and its situation. We also visited our local marae, where the significance of the legend of the 3 whales and its relationship to the kindergarten were shared with the children and whānau | families. Over time, the legend was revisited often, and it soon became both significant and relevant to us all.

During this time, we also looked more closely at our evaluation forms. Where comments had been made about the entranceway, these comments mentioned the fact that the lockers were right in the doorway and that the doorway was both an exit and an entrance. Although not many parents had made such comments, we felt that this may have been due to the fact that the questions we had asked were not sufficiently probing. Therefore, we could not dismiss this issue.

Conclusion

At our end-of-term committee meeting, we presented the summarised information that we had gathered.

We had developed an understanding of the significance of the legend of the 3 whales to our cultural heritage. We considered how we could represent this legend as one that we felt belonged to us all and that we honoured. Our local iwi endorsed our ideas.

Many different images of whales were represented in our kindergarten throughout this time. Children were dramatising and representing images of whales in their artwork and storytelling. Children had made 3 images out of hardboard that they asked to be hung in the entranceway. This provoked a great deal of interest from parents and children alike.

Our parent evaluations suggested to us that we needed to create a less congested entranceway and that this could be achieved by clearing more space and making it more attractive. This was reinforced by the comments provided by the children, who had some very clear ideas about how they wanted the area to look. Children also made suggestions about relocating lockers and their belongings in ways that would respond to our concern to separate hats, shoes and food.

We decided to relocate our lockers and purchase baskets for hats, shoes and lunchboxes to ensure that they were kept separate from one another. We planned to review the outcome of this change in 6 months' time.

Together, we determined that we would develop a mosaic of the 3 whales and have this in our entranceway instead of the lockers. We approached a student artist we knew and asked if she could develop a representation of the 3 whales. She agreed to this, and we had it made into a mosaic feature on the floor of our entrance. The intention is that it will always remain in this place, our place, and that it may provoke people entering our environment to learn more about the significance of the 3 whales represented in the mosaic. The legend itself is also written and displayed for parent and whānau information. The image of the 3 whales was later depicted as a watermark on written material in the kindergarten.