Te Whare Wananga O Ngapuhi - Leadership Camp "Assessment"

Leadership Wānanga

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In the holidays Miss Simeon, gave us the honour to take on the challenge to attend a  leadership hui at Oromahoe Marae.

Anthony, Letisha and I met up with leaders from other local schools like Ohaeawai Primary, Okaihau College, Kaikohe West, Kaikohe East, Kaikohe Intermediate, Whangarei Primary, Otangarei Primary just to name a few that were involved and combined with us.

I was shy did not want to say anything to anyone but my partners and friends that were next to me encouraged me to say “Who I am?” and “Where I was from?” Once I got the heck of it I was no longer shy. Thankfully I had friends that would encourage me to talk more and interact with everyone.

During the camp, I noticed the kids did not display a sense of pride in themselves. They talked freely about being proud themself, they admired our sporting ability, but had quite a different attitude towards being proud of themselves, their family or their class.

I discovered this difficulty of the “pride” feeling at the very early stage of our leadership hui, when I asked some of the kids to introduce themselves and then to tell the group something about themselves. Everyone, kids and adults, looked at me in surprise.

Most of the kids struggled with the idea of being proud. I pushed them by giving an example. I said, “I’m Kurateiteioterangi Matene and I’m from Tautoro (we were still getting to know one another) and I’m very proud of myself for coming to this camp.”

Some shy kids said hesitantly they were proud of themselves for having been chosen to be in this camp, but most of them said, ‘they did not know what to say.’ They used words like ‘boasting’ ‘bragging,’ and being ‘full of themselves’ or being  ‘arrogant’ sadly they could not find anything to say why they were proud of themselves.