In the Term 3 Holidays this year I had the privilege of attending the first ever Cook Island Teacher Summit. This was an event aimed to bring professional learning to teachers in the beautiful island of Rarotonga, after being locked away from the rest of the world through these past ‘covid’ years.
The summit was held over 2 days at the beautiful Te Uki Ou School located on the beachfront in the village of Ngatangiia, in Rarotonga. It included keynotes, panel discussions, and workshops centered around 3 themes of Innovation with Tech, Effective Teaching practice, and Cultural Capability. The event was made a reality thanks to Cook Island Tourism, Manaiakalani Education Trust and a spread of other generous partners and sponsors including Google for Education.
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I myself shared 2 presentations. One on Manaiakalani’s Class OnAir resource, encouraging teachers in the Cook Islands to watch and use the resource, as they start their journey of teaching in a digital environment as internet is becoming more readily available in their schools. I also did more of a hands on workshop modeling computational thinking in the junior school with Beebots.
Something really cool was that my own mum attended and presented at the conference as well. She has 20+ years experience as an RTLB and so did a session on recognising and supporting students with learning support needs. It was really cool to see mum present and to have come and see me present. Although we have are both educators we realised that we don’t (ever) talk shop at home. So it was really lovely to see each other in the professional space. Not to mention it was a special and rare experience to go traveling with Mum without any other family present.
A highlight for me was definitely supporting the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers (MIT) as they presented their projects for the first time in front of the whole Summit audience. They were amazing, all did such a great job, and were very well received by the summit attendees.
It was fantastic experience and I really got a lot out of it, not only from the cultural experiences of visiting and being hosted in the islands, but also the quality and standard of the professional learning was up there with the best of them.
#bringonthecookislandteachersummit2023 🤞
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