Day Eighteen

Day 18 - Arrived in New Zealand and Auckland Museum

I watched a presentation of traditional cultural performances at the museum today. Following this I was able to speak to one of the performers about her schooling experience. She was able to share with me that she had gone to a Maori School growing up, but had not experienced cultural knowledge being delivered through the curriculum.

The museum boasts cultural education programs that teachers can bring students to at the university. I was very interested in the exhibition on Maori Natural Sciences, which explained classification of plants and animals and this relationship with Maori knowledge systems. The exhibition also included Maori Astronomy and how this was used for navigation.

The traditional use of different rocks and minerals was also a large part of the cultural history exhibition and I believe that teaching students about the rock cycle and Moh's hardness scale in this context would make the information more accessible to most students.