Whanau and Wero

I know we are now into March, but I have been thinking (perhaps OVER thinking) my "WORD" for the year, and in the end could not decide between two.

A lot has happened in life over this Summer - mainly personal stuff - but an awful amount of family stuff, both good and bad. Nothing brings out the best in whanau than weddings and funerals, aye?

Hence the decision to focus on WHANAU for the year. I am going to take the liberty to make my own definition of WHANAU for the purposes of my goals.  For me, WHANAU is much more than just my genetical relations (although, they certainly are front and centre around goals I am setting this year). To my mind I have many WHANAU - I have my work WHANAU, my extended WHANAU, my immediate WHANAU, my band WHANAU (who only came into my life late last year!), my Zumba Fitness WHANAU, my hoa WHANAU, and my edu WHANAU.
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Part of my goals this year is to make deliberate decisions to connect and spend quality time with all these elements of WHANAU. So far I have been successful - from playing lego with my nephews to catching up with cousins to attending #educampwelly to dancing at the first Zumba Master Class of 2017. to meeting old high school mates for breakfast.  It has felt AMAZING. Making a conscious decision to just "be" with people is fabulous. I highly recommend it.

And now that I have written this down... I better follow through!!

To my second kupu. WERO.  This year I want to challenge myself - and to be a challenger. I want to make the hard choice, not because it is hard, but because I know that I will learn more. I want to challenge others - in a respectful and non-threatening way (hopefully??) so I can learn more about other peoples points of view.

Success for this WERO? Feeling uncomfortable, asking questions and putting in the mahi. I think success here is going to be hard to quantify. Success might also look very different at the end of the year to what I think it will look like now. Is that a bad thing? I will have to do some more thinking around this!

So, my WHANAU, I am throwing down this WERO to myself. And if I fail, then I will reflect and re-evaluate. As you do.

What is your WERO for the year?

Change - Panoni - #word

Reflecting on last years word - BBR - Building Better Relationships - or whakawhanaungatanga as it morphed into. I really appreciated having a word/concept through which to focus my thinking and actions.  It was a real "ah-ha" moment when it became clear that whanaugatanga resonates with my whole life philosophy/education philosophy, that it is the cornerstone of all the ideas/strategies/actions that I have ever had. Phew. What a year!!!

And last year was a big year. Leaving teaching to come and work at N4L - BIG year!

Which brings me to contemplating this years word.  No pressure!

With many different items on my agenda for the year, including being part of the NAPP2016 cohort, I thought about having some word to do with leadership.  But then I was listening to the great, late David Bowie and one song reached out to me - flooding me with memories, but also hinting at some concepts for the future. #changes. Such an awesome song!

Hence, the word for the year has been decided.

CHANGE.

PANONI.

I quite like that this is a verb AND a noun.  I also took a leaf out of Philippa Antipas's blog and looked up some synonyms of CHANGE.  A few of the synonyms that I liked include DEVELOPMENT, INNOVATION, REVOLUTION, DIVERSITY, RECONSTRUCTION, REFINEMENT, VARIETY.
Likewise, I happened upon the antonyms for CHANGE - sameness, stagnation and uniformity all hit me with some negative vibes.  Words I hope to NEVER apply to my education philosophy.

So, this year, Change is in MY hands.