F**k the Curriculum

by ELV

My Kids Taught Me This

How do you make tamariki who don’t trust adults, learn to stay?

When you split a trauma class that had bonded more deeply to each other than they ever had to the adults around them, the experiment begins.

Monday

Multiple roaming ākonga. In and out of rooms. Hands slapping together in loud “wassup” greetings every time a familiar face passed the window. Kids halfway through tasks suddenly pulled by the gravity of each other again. I spy the pack behaviour, that survival behaviour.

Because despite all the fighting and bitching and drama between them (the reason why we separated them), these kids had lived through the same things. They have all walked the same streets. They have heard the same sirens. Unanimously, they had all seen the same adults come and go.

The adults were the unpredictable part.

From Ministry top dogs making them sit assessments so far beyond their reach they may as well be written in another language, to older siblings locked out of NCEA and university pathways, to burned out principals and revolving-door kaiako, these kids have learned not to trust systems. Or people.

By the end of the day it was: “I hate you Whaea.” “This is boring.” “You never let us have free time.” And underneath all of that was the real translation: Will you leave too?

The day ended with two exhausted teachers who had somehow pulled off a miracle just getting the split functioning within a 24 hour notice window, and a responsive principal who spent Friday night ringing every whānau personally because relationships still matter here, even when the system forgets they do.

Tuesday.

Week 4, Term 2.

But really it was Day One. Ground zero.

So many gaps. So much noise living inside these kids, it hurts your soul. The thing people don’t understand about trauma is that peace can feel threatening when chaos is all your nervous system remembers. This group had never really experienced calm for long enough to trust it. There was always another escalation coming, furniture breaking, swearing, punching. Another argument. Another removal. Another adult snapping. Their small bodies were trained for survival, not learning.

So we desperately both tried to stay patient.

Gentle reminders at first. Soft redirection. Reminders about being in the right place at the right time. Chromebooks open. No, not Spotify. Off the game site please. Back onto the task.

Again. Again. Again.

(Deliberate refrain. Also accurate.)

By lunchtime I had compiled a long email to New Era asking for VPNs to be reset because half the class had figured out ways around the school filters months ago.

What did I learn?

That they are digitally clever, almost superior. That music regulates them. That behind all the swearing and avoidance and nonsense, many of them are trying to self-soothe the only way they know how. Even when I deem the lyrics to be awful. Even when the videos are worse. The noise was comforting because silence asks children to sit with themselves. And for some of our tamariki, that is the hardest thing of all.

Wednesday

Resistance was futile.

They didn’t care about the SMART assessment. Most spammed through it in minutes just to get back to chasing dopamine somewhere else. The fury over blocked Spotify and YouTube was staggering. A few asked to go back to the other room because maybe that teacher hadn’t blocked the WiFi loopholes yet. I sat there feeling slightly defeated waiting for the first bell. I had literacy planned.

Punctuation. Grammar. Semicolons. Subordinate clauses (or whatever the correct science of learning jargon is for that nowadays — my fried brain can't compute).

I had palnned all of the things the curriculum says mattered at 9am on a Wednesday morning. But their learning habits were too fractured for that battle first thing. You cannot teach semicolons to children whose brains are still scanning for emotional danger. So, I put the mandated curriculum aside for a moment and taught the curriculum they actually understood.

A spontaneous and responsive curriculum of playlists and digital avatars. One of graffiti art and digital identity. Of Music and choice and agency. We made a deal.

If they stayed on task, contributed properly, and kept to safe online behaviour, we would build a shared class playlist together. Clean versions only, absolutely zero explicit lyrics. Not one degrading video. They could even earn points towards brand new headphones.

Suddenly they cared.

We used Padlet to share our favourite songs. We talked enthusiastically about why music matters. They discovered online footprints, which led to discussion about what respect looks like digitally. Then we started creating learning reflection blogs. Real ones. The kind where I promised I would eventually teach them how to build websites properly like mine.

They made their own avatars. It didn’t have to look like them, just a version of themselves they wanted to be. They included styled usernames through graffiti apps where they experimented with colour and identity and design.

And in the afternoon, something else changed. Our rough, resistant, dysregulated kids became tuakana. They sat beside the teina teaching them how to create avatars and digital art with gentleness I had not yet seen from them all week.

For the first time since Monday, the room felt still.

Not silent.

But safe.

And standing there amongst playlists and graffiti fonts and children finally staying long enough on task to belong somewhere, I realised this was the curriculum.

Not the one written for them from overseas, for voters and politicians, but the one responsive enough to finally reach them.

Ngā mihi Room 13, I look forward to you teaching me more tomorrow :)