ACES Weekly Buzz !
22 October 2025 - Term 4 - Week 3 - Issue 23
ACES Past, Present and Future
Welcome to the latest ACES Weekly Buzz! 🥳
This issue is packed with updates spanning ACES academic achievement over the last 25 years, our vital impact in the Community and a celebration of wonderful student talent. We begin by highlighting a significant accomplishment: Damien’s presentation at the recent AALRA Action Research conference. This important study has been academically published and will be instrumental in driving innovation and reflective practice within our AE community.
Looking ahead, we include an important reminder regarding tomorrow’s Strike Action and details on the resulting school closure.
We then shift our focus to celebrating creativity with a preview of the inaugural ACES Exhibition, which will showcase the diverse talents of our Ākonga (learners). Karyl shared the "ACES timeline" to the events management project group yesterday, which will be one of the central kaupapa of the event, we can't wait to share our work with you in person early December.
We also take a moment to look back with a 2024 End-of-Year Prizegiving Flashback, reminding us of our ACES value of Excellence, a value often promoted by our recently passed and much beloved colleague Buchanan Niuapu, whom we will honour in our 2025 Celebrations with a new supreme award.
Finally, to ensure you stay ahead, please take note of the crucial list of Important Dates for the coming term.
I recently had the privilege of co-presenting at an ALAARA Action Research Conference at AUT. At this conference, I helped present, from a participant's perspective, my experiences in an Action Research Project that ACES staff members took part in. This research was focused on the experiences of students in mainstream schooling that influenced how they arrived in Alternative Education. I was reminded, as we presented our findings, that a collaborative approach to education is so important. Part of the process of our Action Research was hearing the stories of our rangatahi and providing opportunities for them to be ‘seen’ and their voices ‘heard.’ When a young person feels seen and their voices are heard, they are then empowered to be a co-agent in their transformation.
In connection to our ongoing mahi at ACES, I see collaboration and co-agency with our ākonga as an integral part of our work. This is why I love our Project Based Learning (PBL) kaupapa, which encourages students to partner with Tutors to drive the direction of their learning. I have been inspired recently by our sports academy project, whose participants have designed a project on providing team-building games at a local primary school. I had the privilege of witnessing a beautiful moment when observing our students facilitating one of these sessions. A young girl had been accidentally hit and was crying and so left the court. While she was on the sideline, one of our students got down to her level and spoke to her gently to comfort her and then encourage her to build resilience by having another go. This gave her the courage to jump back on the court and she had a great time. I was so proud of our students and our Tutors for creating this opportunity for our rangatahi to shine!
At times, the mahi our Tutors do is not easy, though incredibly rewarding. However, their willingness to create opportunities for our students to be co-creators of their own learning is inspirational. The old saying comes to mind: “Feed a person a fish, feed them for a day; teach a person to fish, and feed them for a lifetime.” Our students are being empowered to drive their own learning, and even more importantly, their learning is taking place inside real-world, authentic contexts. This is not only building their literacy and numeracy skills embedded in our projects through naturally occurring learning; it is also allowing them to develop critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and display resilience. This is why PBL is such a great tool in our alternative education context, and I look forward to the next term as we continue to support our rangatahi to overcome historic barriers to learning and thrive as life-long learners and leaders.
"Whaia te iti kahurangi, ki te tuohu koe me he maunga teitei."
‘Seek the treasure that you value most dearly, if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.’
Damien Fogarty - ACES Pedagogical Leader
