“At the Marae”, They Learned to Stand

by Rebecca Thomas

Just a few bends in the road from the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, where the whenua still carries the breath of promises made and broken, a small school came quietly alive.

Not with banners. 

Not with hashtags.

But with something deeper —a stirring.

A pulse. A rhythm.

The kind that arrives when a living language is held up like light.

It was the first day of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. But here, in this whare of learning, it felt less like a celebration and more like a return. The kind whispered between generations.

The lead teacher stood.

No mic.

No slideshow.

Just truth.

She began with gratitude — a reminder that te reo Māori is not simply a taonga to admire from a distance, but a taonga tuku iho — a living treasure, gifted through breath, memory, and survival.

She spoke of two kinds of taonga: those we hold in our hands, and those we hold in our mouths. And how, for her, one had been taken — and the other fought for.

Then came the story. 

Of whānau who were once told to keep quiet. To stay silent in classrooms. To pretend they were just dumb, because the only language they knew wasn’t English —and English was the only thing the system knew how to value.

You could feel the shift in the room.

That quiet ache that settles in when tamariki begin to understand that their reo — their whakapapa — had once been a reason for punishment.

It was no ordinary start to the school week.

And it made perfect sense that the maths test was quietly bumped back to after morning tea.

Something more important was happening here. Something worth pausing for.

I was manuhiri in that classroom. 

A visitor.

But one already known — familiar from the days when these same students had penned spoken-word verses about school lunches that went far in academic circles, and painted Banksy-style critiques of high-stakes exams on walls that were supposed to be blank.

I had planned this visit with care. 

I brought with me a book — At the Marae — and a challenge.

I told them I needed their critical eyes. 

That I now teach small children in my new school, and I needed to know: Was this pukapuka suitable for them? 

Were these words the kind that could help teach children to read, or would they confuse?

They were in. 

Tamariki rise when you give them something real to rise to.

We read it page by page. I asked them to talk to each other, then to me.

Their feedback was laced with the clarity that only children have — that wise, unfiltered lens adults often forget how to use:

“It has a good range of punctuation whaea — it can help teach what speech marks are and exclamation marks.”

“I like the way it has te reo Māori in it — if kids don’t have that at home, they can get access at school.”

“Some of the words might be a bit too challenging. There needs to be some work around them first.”

“It’s not too challenging whaea. I learned those words at day care before I even started school.”

“Some words might be hard to sound out if you don’t know the Māori sounds.”

The reflections were true. 

Honest. 

You could feel the shift in the air. 

The stage was being set — not for a performance, but for participation.

I thanked them for their insights — their feedback and their feedforward. And then I offered them the real puzzle. A seed of complexity that had lodged itself into my inbox and now, into my conscience.

I told them what the Ministry had said — that the book 'At the Marae' was not going to be reprinted. That apparently, it had too many Māori words.

Their faces held the pause for me.

Because we all knew what was really being said, without it needing to be spoken aloud.

I didn’t ask them how it made them feel — I didn’t need to. The question I did ask was: What would you do if you were me?

Eyes flickered. 

Bodies leaned forward. 

Chat grew stronger. 

Animated hands began slicing the air between ākonga. 

These weren’t students performing a task — they were thinkers, strategists.

I asked them to stand if they had a plan. If they had received that email, sat in that teacher’s chair — what would they do?

One by one, they stood. Plans rolled in.

Teach the kupu.

Print more copies — heaps of them.

Share them.

Hide them in bookshelves around the school. 

Write letters.

Protest.

Call the Minister out.

A smile curled at the edge of my lips. I slowly turned and invited them to look at the T-shirt I had on.

Someone gasped.

Another grinned.

Then someone shouted: “Whaea — they’re the words from the pukapuka!”

We all smiled.

And that’s when I asked the question I’d been saving:

“I wonder what your T-shirt might say?”

The silence wasn’t awkward. It was alive. Poised with art of the possible.

We chatted a little more, but I didn’t overextend it. Sometimes, the best thing you can do as a teacher is stop talking.

I just left a seed.

I asked, “Will anyone be taking action over what we just shared?”

No pressure. No checklist. No outcome sheet.

Just the possibility of voice.

And I have a feeling — by the end of the week — there’ll be some new T-shirts. Some Banksy-style stencils on school walls. Maybe even a spoken word piece or two that lands right in the inbox that made the decision in the first place.

I didn’t have to say a word.

They knew.

They felt the dissonance — between policy and people, taonga and gatekeeping. And without any adult steering their thoughts, they already knew how to respond.

Perhaps something is beginning. Something that started 'at the marae' —and learned to stand.