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Sandy feet. Big beach. Full heart.

Just handed over the last draft of six learning pathways for schools and teachers to consider the ways they’re incorporating sustainability across the curriculum. Boy, does it feel so simply good to get back to my toes in my garden. #practicewhatyoupreach

Squirrel-like winter preparation.

I imagine many of us are trying to wrestle with the overwhelming weight of the events of Friday. And I think in wrestling with the weight - which is, and should feel, mighty - we’re coming up with platitudes that aren’t necessarily accurate. “This is not New Zealand.” It’s comforting to think this, but I’m not certain it’s true. When I was at the Teaching Council, I had the privilege of developing the work direction for the second stage of “Give Nothing to Racism” in collaboration with the Human Rights Commission. It’s still in development, but it’ll appear soon. It was funded because compelling evidence shows that many, many, many learners experience racism from their peers AND their teachers. Think about that. Young people in school experience racism, often everyday from their teachers. That racism exists, as part of the fabric of our society, is shocking to Pākeha, but it is no surprise to almost anyone else. This actually is New Zealand. I know what you might want to think - that micro aggressions, indifference, unintentional racism, or even intentional racism are not the same as what happened on Friday. But they are. It’s the same iceberg. One of the diamonds I got to work with was Dr Ann Milne. She should be a national treasure. Anyway, she told me about the iceberg metaphor. We know what sits above the water. We know what racist attacks look like, we know what racist jokes are, and what racist slurs look like. We now all know what Friday looks like. Anyway, crucially, the visible ice sits on a base of invisible ice under our societal water. What sits here? Our prejudices, our colonial history that we can’t acknowledge but that is filled with bloodshed and confiscation, preferential treatment for one set of norms over another, the bias- the baked-in bias that has caused all this born white privilege, and importantly, the indifference to this born privilege. This is New Zealand. What happened on Friday was part of that iceberg. He stained the ice deep red and we never imagined anyone would, but he was standing on ice already there. And he made it impossible for us to pretend it isn’t anymore.

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