Ian Taylor, Manurewa Intermediate Principal: The Education Review Office talked about how calm it felt here. Now that was a really interesting adjective to use because I wouldn't have thought it was calm. It is peaceful, but calm really did my heart good, because I thought ‘yeah’, this is an environment where there were fights galore on the field.

It was pretty scary if you like. It needed someone to care for the place. It needed someone to watch, to be here. So now the environment is peaceful. It's also very dynamic. It's incredibly busy.

Pete Jones, Manurewa High School Princial: He's done a lot of positive things to bring good people through who are passionate about kids and who want to work in this space.

Taylor: I'm proud of the people who we've managed to attract to our school to help contribute to that for our kids.

[Singing]

Ross Devereux, Manurewa Intermediate Assoc. Principal: My stake in this school is just having, is being utterly passionate about this community and these people. And being able to give them an educational journey that is going to set them on a really fantastic pathway for the rest of their lives.

Teacher: If the value of a try was never changed to five points, would the same team have won the game?

Angela Ruahihi, Parent: The teachers are driven to help the kids in whatever situation, whether they're low-achievers, high-achievers, they cater for everybody.

Student: I like how our school celebrates each and everyone's culture.

[singing]

Sam Holt, Manurewa Intermediate Assoc Principal: These kids, they just have that energy, that curiosity, that spark in them that you just don't find anywhere else.

Student: I chose 'Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision'.

Holt: A whole bunch of our kids have this amazing capability to be young leaders. We do have a whole bunch of systems to recognise potential, to develop that potential.

Student: We're the generation, the future generation of the leaders.

Alma Sefatu, Parent: I wish we had a school like this, when I was this age. You know I'm like, you kids are so lucky.

Devereux: We have evenings throughout the year where parents come in and that's our target, to say ‘look this is what we're doing. This is something you could try at home with your child.’ We're empowering them. And they love that.

Student: My poem was about I'm proud, I'm proud to be who I am and that.

Devereux: We've seen engagement increase. We've seen attendance increase. We've seen community come into school. They want to be here. They want to sort of be part of their kid's learning journey.

Val Pora, Trustee: I actually think that our children are very, very fortunate to be in this school.

Taylor: The kids in our community, they deserve to have the best leaders, the best teachers, the best support staff, and that's our ongoing challenge to make sure we always try and get the best people to help them, because they deserve it.

Student: They've made me become a proud person, on all of my cultures, and I'm just happy that
I can take something with me and keep it inside of me and spread it around all of our community, or not even our community, the world.

Dayne Hollis, Teacher: Parents and the community even up the coast are seeing that Boys High is offering something that no other school in Tai Rāwhiti is offering, and that’s why we are getting an abundance of boys coming through because they want to pick up this taonga, this treasure that we have.

(Māori Chant)

Greg Mackle, Principal: We were able to take a programme and develop it here for our young men, Tū Tāne.
Teacher: Who are you and who are you going to be in the future? Who do you want to be? What type of footprint are you going to leave behind.

Zac, Student: I never thought about myself in that kind of way before. I‘ve never really thought about who I am and where I was from but I think Tū Tāne just makes you think about yourself a lot more.

Senior Constable Amai: We wanted to get away from the stereotypical ritual of what it was to be a good man, following these different rites of passage.

Amia, cont: If you fulfil your true potential not only will you help out in your own whanau you may even contribute to New Zealand as a whole, or to the world.

Simon Murphy, Head of PE: By the end of the year by the time we finish the camp, which is the final milestone for the year, the guys are pretty close as a group.

Tom Cairns, Assistant Principal: There is a real sense of recognising other peoples’ struggles and also recognising how you can help that, and how you can be the best man you can be.

(Hui ē, tāiki ē.)

Mackle: It comes back to our school motto –‘courage knows no defeat’. If you haven’t got the courage to step forward and take up a challenge then you will never know what you can achieve.

Craig Callaghan, Head of Whakairo: If we look up here we’ll see the whakairo Matua Derek Ladelli established years ago for our school, those are the waka that came and inhabited this area here in Tai Rāwhiti.
We like to have a football in one arm and a girl in the other arm and that’s what young 15 year olds are like the world over but whakairo brings something different out in us.

Our aim was always to emulate these awesome carvings so that people can see the legacy as being continued. It’s a passion to grab a whao and a kuru, a mallet and a chisel, and to create and it's something that comes from your forefathers, right down the lines since they came from Hawaiki.

Parent: It just strengthens that union of tupuna and to have it come down through Sean.It's really touching as a parent to see the work that your children can create being in this whakairo environment.

Callaghan: We knew the parents and the family would be blown away and they loved it to the point where some people have been bought to tears looking at their son’s work.
What we’ve also been able to do is take the body of knowledge of whakairo and to take those skills and encompass them in many of the units involved in some of the other curriculum areas.

Mackle: Last year our Māori boys out performed our non-Māori boys at Level Two.

Mackle, to student: Well, I’ll be interested in buying this one at the end of the year because I always buy one for the school but it’s got to mean something, and in terms of what you just said, a young man being looked after by the guardians, is pretty important I reckon.

Mackle, cont: The success has bred success. Achievement has bred achievement. The credibility of the whakairo course at our school, by our staff, by our community has fulfilled everything that we set out to do.

Our year twelves and our year thirteens are fantastic young men. They have a real relationship with our younger year nine and year tens and I’ve got absolutely no doubt that is the foundation of what they learnt in Tū Tāne.
In terms of behavioural problems, the results are absolutely remarkable, and year tens are often the ones who got suspended a lot. We’ve had no suspensions this year.

Cairns: They were making better judgements about whether or not to do that really stupid thing. ERO looked into that and we became one of their good practice schools for reduction in stand-down and suspension, based around the Tū Tāne programme and whakairo.

Amai: Our very first class graduated last year. Those boys are in university and we see them around town it’s easy to have a chat and you know, to catch up.

Callaghan: The community and the school community are saying, "Wow look at these young guys and look at what they're capable of doing".

(Haka)

Martina Ewing, Assistant Supervisor: I suppose it began in October of 2012. Natalia and her mum came for a look round the centre to enrol and we were aware that Natalia was profoundly deaf. So that sort of began our interest in deaf culture.

Liz Kay, Parent: Natalia sort of went from the nursery, where the teachers were signing a lot, and then moved into the preschool where they probably hadn't learnt as much.

But then they just came on board with the whole thing and I just noticed the change in her behaviour and her actually wanting to be here, once they started really coming on board and learning heaps. It made a huge difference to her, you know, that she's being recognised in that way.

Ewing: We wanted to be able to communicate with Natalia, her brother Jayden and her father, who are all deaf, and we wanted to be able to communicate with them in the way that they communicate together at home with sign.

We started with DVDs and posters and different resources that we gained from Liz and from Van Asch Deaf School.

We started teaching the other teachers, started teaching the children and we were just absolutely astounded at how quickly the children were soaking it up and how eager they were to learn more.

Teacher to students: Now Josh, what can you sign?

A monkey.
Good monkey! A monkey.

Kay: Sign language is so powerful especially when you're getting, you know, the littlies starting from one. They're able to communicate what they want and what they need. They don't have those frustrations and so for all the kids here they're able to have that, you know, that privilege really of being able to communicate in two languages.

Se’e Brewster, teacher: We are getting a bit of knowledge from Natalia. It's important, it's a learning tool and it's also fun you know, we make it fun instead of just something that's a must. But we just turn it into a positive.

Kay: It's been amazing. All the kids have embraced it. Other parents are enjoying the fact that the whole centre is learning sign language. It means that our kids are a part of the centre and it's not just something that they're doing specially for them, it's something for everyone that everyone's benefiting from and that's the cool thing. Because as a parent you don't want to be like we're, you know, burdening this extra load on you. It's like it's enjoyable. Everyone's loving it. Yeah.

Sarah Healey, parent: One day he sat at the table playing preschools and he was moving his hands about and I'm like ‘what are you doing?’ and he says 'Mum don't you know? It's sign language.' And he was teaching me sign language! And I was like, well I definitely have to go to school and learn that one. So yeah, he was doing really well and he does it at home.

He doesn't judge, he just takes his time and he understands that there's a problem with people's ears and he, yeah, he looks for a different way of talking to them.

Ewing: We have decided now where we're going to. I think it's really important to continue setting goals so that this continues as an everyday part of our centre life.
I don't think you need to have a deaf student at your centre to be able to learn sign language and see its benefits for all children.