Introduction

The following "review and appreciation" of Hikoi ki te Hauora (The Journey To Wellbeing) is provided, from a teacher's perspective, for the information of fellow teachers.

The writer is one of the original trial and pilot teachers who now uses the resource regularly and very successfully, in her High School situation in the Far North.

Hikoi ki te Hauora – Notes from Karen Hedges, Kaitaia College (kheges@kaitaiacollege.school.nz)

We have been using this programme now for three years. It is delivered to all our Year 9 students over two terms, with three periods a week (the periods ranging from 45-55 minutes). Because we have been using it for so long, we have (as all Health teachers do with new programmes) developed, adapted and fine-tuned it to meet our needs as teachers and the needs of our students. Our classes are mixed ability – either a top-mid band mix or a mid-low band mix. Numbers range from 24-28. Our school is about 55% Maori, 45% Pakeha.

Appropriateness to Teacher Needs

This programme has provided us with a vehicle upon which to hang all the work we used to cover in our old topic based programme – e.g. Hauora, sexuality, drug and alcohol and nutrition etc. We really like the way we are able to build our factual content for those topics into a whole personal development programme and Year 9 Health teaching staff feel really positive about this programme. We are lucky enough to have heaps of time – three periods a week for two terms. In some short terms we have found ourselves running short of time for some of the factual content we would like to cover in those topics, but as we cover these in more depth in Year 10, we are happy to focus on the personal development opportunities offered by Hikoi ki te Hauora. We see that as the essence of the programme. It helps students to recognise where they are in their lives, to identify some of the difficulties they may face, to recognise their own strengths and to become quite clear about who can support them and how to get support.

We start with an overview of Hauora with several activities that explore the concept and demonstrate each of the dimensions. (We revisit this in Chapters 17 and 18. The activity we do here* is one I find very rewarding as the students can quite clearly demonstrate their understanding of Hauora and it is particularly good as a tool to develop their understanding of taha wairua, often the most difficult.) We then begin the story, reading only the first chapter, explaining that this is an imaginary tale, a fable, a fantasy story, but that it charts this boy's progress through some difficult times affecting all dimensions of his health. We tell student's that we will be stopping the story often to look at how he deals with these problems and whether what he does can help us, or help others around us, in similar or different situations. We then spend some time looking at 'where we are now' before we move on with the 'journey to health'. We do this with the History Road* of their lives so far. (We refer back to this record of their lives frequently throughout the programme adding detail and ideas.)

When we started this programme our main contributing intermediate school was using this as a text for their English programme. It did not seem to matter that some students were familiar with the story, but it is not an issue now as the Intermediate agreed to our request not to use it. A few students have read the book independently – they generally loved it and don't mind it read again.

Appropriateness to Average-Needs Students

It fits these students very well. It is varied, has activities that address all learning styles, lessons can be adapted from individual activities, to small groups to whole class with ease, sometimes the activity lends itself to all three as a way of reinforcing the learning and widening their ideas – e.g. the "what's important to me" work. I sometimes give out the copysheet for the values continuum cards for them to cut and paste their individual choices, then into small groups to discuss their differences, then as a whole class in a circle with big cards. If the classes are good 'talkers' I do it the other way round so that they have heard lots of opinions before they make their own decisions.

I use 'bus stop'* activities, and 'stay and stray'* as methods of generating lots of ideas before students have to think about what might apply to them. Alternatively, 'Think, Pair, Share'* works well before brainstorms.

The vast majority of our students love being read to. They nag to have more of the story – which is probably just a way of avoiding what they see as 'work'! – but their interest does not usually wane. Having said that, we make an effort to read it well. We are using story telling as a therapeutic tool and so it can't be left for average student readers to labour their way through a page reading aloud, or for slower readers to struggle to read it for themselves. It needs to be read with the all the pace, drama, emotion that is in there. Generally the longest spell of reading is about 20 minutes, although I once read for a marathon 40 minutes on a very hot (32 degrees in the classroom) last period lesson! It is hard work.

The book is a bit too long as it is to fit into most schools timetables but is easily culled. I am lucky enough to be onto my tenth and eleventh round of teaching this programme in 2003 and my working copy of the Gem of the First Water is full of black vivid lines where I have taken out passages as well as pasted in bits of paper where I have changed the phrasing a bit. I don't worry about 'American' words if the part I am reading allows me to pause and ask the class if they know what it means – that's all part of extending their vocab, but if it would ruin the flow to stop, then I change the word in the text. I guess I have reduced it by about a fifth and will probably take out more this year.

Appropriateness for Special Needs

I have taught this programme to a mixed ability class of 22 (mid-lower band mix) with three other special needs students (who had one teacher aide between them). It was extremely hard work!! But far more adaptable to their needs than anything else I have taught. There is a lot of moving, making and doing in these lessons and the students responded well to that. They loved the story. I ask students not to talk while I am reading, but they know they can 'doodle' in their books, colour pictures from the story, or put heads down to listen. They are attentive and their recall of the story is good. Their understanding of the concepts we are trying to teach is limited, but feedback tells me that they have given thought to what is important to them in their lives, that they acknowledge the part friends and family play in helping them through tough times and at least retain the ideas of "think before you speak and act", and 'everyone has courage'.

The Cultural Relevance of the Material

Our school is approximately 55% Maori, 45% Pakeha.

The using of a fable fits well – story telling is part of Maori cultural heritage. The History Road activity emphasises the importance of our past and the place of other people in our lives. The values of Kaitiakitanga and whanaungatanga emerge beautifully from the lessons on what we value and what is important to us, as well as the work around The Wilderness. The concept of Hauora is demonstrated clearly through the work around Reaping the Bitter Fruit and A time of Healing. The lessons around the Ten Tenets offer an opportunity to explore the life principles used by a range of cultures and religions. There are whakatauaki that match parts of the story that can be used to sum up the lessons, or as alternatives to the key concepts.

e.g.
Ma te mohio ka marama
Through knowledge there is understanding

He oranga ngakau
He pikinga waiora
Positive feelings in your heart will raise your sense of self worth

Our own school whakatauaki fits in especially well after the 'Time for healing' chapter:
Ka whangaia, ka tupu, ka puawai
That which is nurtured blossoms then grows. We look at how the boy is nurtured in all dimensions and talk about how the school can nurture students (A Health Promoting School link).

Or from another indigenous culture, this fabulous American Indian story which really sums up the conflict between Hugh and the Worm and reinforces the idea that worm gets stronger when he is fed anger and lies from the boy.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life:

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

"The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

"This same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather which wolf would win.

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Drug and Alcohol Education

We fit our Drug and Alcohol work around the chapter about Elvis – the Valley of the Shadow. At this stage we have covered a lot of work that pull this together nicely. For example, we refer back to 'think before you act and think before you speak', ' Be honest with yourself', 'what is important' etc, reviewing that learning before looking at decisions around drug and alcohol use. Because we have covered Hauora in some depth, it is easy for students to see how abuse can affect all dimensions and from there it links to 'move your behaviour in line with your goals' and again reviews who in their lives can help them if they are struggling. We use resources from FADE, Caring for Yourself and Others etc for these lessons.

Community Involvement

We visit the police station after we have covered the work about the dungeon. Our local police are excellent – they know the story and ask the students questions that relate to it, and answer the student's questions with reference to the story. We visit the Public Health Nurse's clinic when covering the work on support people in our community.

I have worked with three different community facilitators. I have been lucky enough to work with people who were committed to the programme and extremely professional. I personally benefited enormously from their involvement in the classroom and developed a real teaching partnership with them. Initially though, the draw back was the time needed before and after the lesson to co-ordinate and review. This time is not available to teachers with a full teaching day. One of the big advantages of a second person in the classroom is sharing of the teaching load. This is a very intensive programme. Although we are very pleased with the outcomes, and enjoy teaching it, it is full on. Even the reading can be exhausting, when you are putting your all into reading it well. It is therefore great to have someone else to read while you do the follow up teaching or vice versa.

Overcoming Some of the Hiccups

Time frame: Fortunately our timetable allows us plenty of time in Year 9 but we have culled the story and do not do all of the activities in the programme. Because we have been teaching it for three years now, most teachers have developed a range of activities to replace some of those in the programme and we mix and match to suit the time frame and the class. It is obviously personal choice about what should be missed but here are a few of the things we have done:

• We don't make the bag Activity C page 33. We use instead a History Road of their lives. We spend some time on this work as we refer back to it on numerous occasions throughout the programme.
• We combine the work about wise people and the description of Bartrum, into one section about wise helpers. We then invite in representatives of all the peer support groups in the school, plus the counselor and the Public Health nurse.
• We miss out "Challenging unreasonable thoughts" – this has been too hard for our students.
• The Geese video we only use briefly when we do the Ten Tenets work, as an example of possible life principles.
• I personally don't read the pages 170-174 that are about the Norseman of Debt and the Canyon of Sadness. I have had some excellent work from my academically able students looking at these issues, but usually time is too short to give them the attention they need, so I don't read them.
• This year we are moving our Sexuality component towards the beginning, and making it a part of the "where are we now – who am I?" focus that we start with.
• We don't do group chapter presentations at the end as we have developed quite a range of activities around the final chapters.

Boredom: The dreaded 'B' word!! Very few find the story boring, but of course they use the word whenever they are not engaged with the learning tasks. They are most often not engaged when they cannot see the relevance. We have become very explicit about the learning outcomes, very explicit about how what the boy is experiencing may relate to their lives and we constantly relate the work back to Hauora. I sometimes give other examples of stories that teach us something (e.g. Aesops fables) so they clearly understand that although this is a fantasy story, it has messages and lessons for us.

I also cut down the particularly wordy bits and limit the pieces that are long flowery descriptions.

Once in the middle of reading a male student yawned very loudly and said 'this is boring'. When I asked what made it boring, he replied ' the boy is so gay'. That lead to some interesting discussion and the issue eventually boiled down to the student's discomfit with the boy's level of disclosure of his thoughts and feelings i.e. – "boys wouldn't talk like that". I told them that I thought maybe they were right, that many of us didn't openly share our thoughts and feelings, but that we still had those thoughts and feelings. I suggested that the story was written like that so we could get a glimpse of the feelings behind his behaviour and then we went back to the definition we have of taha hinengaro and discussed the boy's progress towards health (i.e. his journey) and decided that the fact that he was now able to say what he felt and deal with his feelings was his progress towards health. Now when I start the programme and we are talking about hinengaro I ask the students to specifically listen for examples that show the boy is able to acknowledge his feelings and express them constructively – again being really clear about the learning outcomes.

Difficulty/language of text: We have culled quite a bit after many readings, sometimes sentences, sometimes paragraphs, sometimes whole pages – particularly from chapter 23 onwards. We always read it ourselves, so don't have to worry about the reading level of students. Americanisms are left in, and we pause to discuss the words, unless it ruins the flow of the story, in which case we change it. We have had no problems with the 'fantasy' genre, especially with films like The Lord of the Rings being all the rage, but again we are very explicit about why we are using this sort of story and how we can learn from it.

We have never had problems with students not following or losing interest in the story, they always have very good recall. I can see that it would be an issue if it was spread over more than two terms, or less than twice a week.

Intensiveness of the Programme

We find this programme pretty full on, requiring high energy levels and full concentration! And with two classes of three periods each (not to mention five or more other classes), we really feel we are earning our keep! We have tried to put in lessons that are less intensive at regular intervals to have a breather. I use a video! For the section on Courage I show two short clips from the movie Forrest Gump – the one where Forrest is rescuing all his mates during the bombing in Vietnam (as an example of courage when we or someone we love is in danger), and the part where Jenny offers Forrest a seat on the bus after he has been rejected by everyone else (as an example of courage to stand up for our convictions, or to go against the crowd). Then when we have finished the Courage work, I show the whole video, and we have a "Life is a box of Chocolates" competition. The students record all of the wise sayings they hear from the video, and the person with the most wins a box of chocolates. If we have time, they choose the one they like best (the saying, I mean, not the chocolate!) and share what they think it means and why they chose it.

We also use the making of the "Book of Life" as an ongoing activity. When the teacher or the class needs a less intensive time, we bring out the books to work on, so about every three weeks or so we have half a lesson working on them.

Comments

We would appreciate additional commentaries and positive feedback about the resource or implementation of Hikoi ki te Hauora (The Journey To Wellbeing) in your High School / College.

Our Education Consultants will be invited to consider all submissions prior to publication on the website so that original or unique ideas may be included in our intended review of the resource.