Week 16 - Rotorua and Ōwhata marae

 Investigation - 'How many washes are needed to get the sulfur smell out of your clothes?'

Day 1 - travel to Rotorua + Waimangu Volcanic Valley visit.

It would be GREAT to bring a school trip here! Logistically 'challenging' (plus rather expensive) but somewhere SO different to Chch that it is worth the effort. Lesson from university - look for FUNDING; find organisation(s) that are sufficiently aligned that we can get money from them... First thoughts - Gateway and/ or STAR funding from school (possibly some tourism US?) AirNZ might do us a deal? Can incorporate Earth Science and Te Ao Māori. Probably needs significant lead-time = plan for next year.

To do:

Find best time of year for trip. Definitely makes sense to include for senior students. Mid/ late Term ONE?

Funding - check at school + UC for possible contacts

Contacts in Rotorua - ask Kura


Day 2 - Wananga/ whakapapa

From chat with Pete - variety of forms for wharenui + where are 'our' school marae? Rotorua = traditional; Wheki = 'modern'; Arahura = 'stunning'; Tuahiwi = Ao Tawhiti marae, but I've never been - surely we should go there as a staff semi-regularly? The importance of whakapapa, pūrākau and connections between whanau and whenua (we did not reflect during the wananga on the implications of 'whenua' being the word for both 'the land' and 'the placenta'). We also did not really compare/ contrast as a group the differences between Rotorua, where Māori kept more of their land and culture, and many of the regions that participant teachers live in, although it was certainly a topic that was raised in several conversations.

Day 3 - Mixing pūrākau and science

There were some cool ideas for modeling Earthquake waves using water. There was also some discussion of using the pūrākau of Tūtānekai + Hinemoa as a context for a science investigation. I think it is great to use pūrākau as inspiration, but can see some significant risks in the activity becoming a 'myth-busters' type activity, where the aim becomes to prove or disprove Māori 'MYTHS'. I have seen this in action when some physics teachers use the pūrākau of Maui slowing the sun as a context to prove that the MYTH is a 'silly story' that has NO BASIS IN REALITY... In a marvelous piece of synchronicity, while talking about tātai arorangi on Wednesday evening, Rikki mentioned that Te Matau A Maui rises above the sun during summer = Maui's hook slowing the sun to give us longer days. It was also interesting hearing the 3rd year physics student discussing his project - and how focused he was on his chosen theoretical framework for the experiment. So much so that he ignored (almost seemed to not hear) other ideas that were raised. He also seemed to be suffering from the classic Physicist affliction (which can also be observed in other science disciplines) that reality is governed by our theories and equations (ie. this is possible because the equation says so) rather than accepting that theories and equations are attempts to approximate descriptions of reality (and if something happens that your theory says should/ could not happen, then your theory is probably wrong/ incomplete)

side note: in another piece of Te Reo confusion, maui also means left (interesting to observe that Te Ao Māori seems to not have the same negative connotations to Left (= sinister) as Europe) and matau also means right... so google translates "the hook of māui" to "te matau o maui", and "te matau o māui" to "left and right". As well as being a constellation and part of numerous pūrākau, "matau o māui" is also the name given to a species of sedge native to Aotearoa and Hawai'i that is also given the Pakeha name 'bastard grass'.

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