I grew up in a tiny, coastal Māori community in New Zealand where my family was one of the very few Pākehā (White) families in the district and at the one-teacher rural school.

With hindsight, I realised that my family had a status in that community that we didn’t understand. At Māori community celebrations and events, we were treated as honoured guests, but I never questioned this or thought about why. I absorbed the richness of a Māori community from a position of unearned privilege.

At the age of 16, I left the security of home and the beach to be thrown into the world of study and teacher training in Auckland, where, again, no one ever challenged me to think about inequity or injustice.  That conscientisation did not happen for another two decades, when my own children, who identify as Māori through their father’s heritage, began secondary school.

I am honoured to have been inextricably linked to the counter story of Kia Aroha College for the last 33 years, on a professional level as a teacher and principal, a writer, speaker, and researcher, as well as on a personal level as a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother of Māori children, whose own experiences in our education system opened my eyes, and forever changed my own teaching practice and the lens I looked through.

I am enormously proud of the achievements of Kia Aroha College. After 22 years in the principal’s role, I felt it was time to move on, to pass on the experience and the knowledge I have been given in this journey, and to support other educators, school leaders, and communities in their similar pathways. In New Zealand, my work is with Māori and Pasifika children and communities, and I am now thoroughly enjoying engaging with those who want to make real change for Indigenous and minoritised learners in your classes and schools