Far North students to solve problems in US

Bee-friendly girls off to the US: Annaleah Cassidy-Taylor, Teina Snowden, Manaaki Jakobs-TepPaa and Ayvran Mackie. (Left to Right)

Different learing produces honey and successful students

Oturu Primary near Kaitaia is a school where they do things a little bit differently. Students here produce honey from the school’s beehives, olive oil from their olive trees, lip balm, soap and even beauty cream.

The school also ‘produced’ four Year 8 students that were selected to participate in the world’s Problem Solving Conference in Wisconsin this month.

Manaaki Jakobs is one of the four girls that will represent New Zealand at the US conference. 

“We don’t do normal things like other schools. I think we are the only school that has bees,” she says.

It was their school project about bringing bees back into the community that made the four girls gain a spot in the competition for which they leave on June 6th, 2011.

Over the past year, they researched bees, talked to experts, did surveys and presentations, planted seeds, talked to farmers and even worked with consultants on how to increase the amount of honey bees in the community.

The decile one school is an EnviroSchool with a hands-on learning approach.
Principal Fraser Smith says, “It’s a low socio-economic area, so kids are good with hands-on stuff.

“We are allowed to do what we are doing. It’s called authentic learning and it’s wrapped up in the New Zealand curriculum.”

Smith took over the role as Oturu Principal about 10 years ago. “We believed in a dream. It was a very unrestful place to be. So, we started doing a lot of planting and gardening and we grew it and grew it,” he says.

The school now has chickens and bees, vegetable and flower gardens, and hundreds of olive and citrus trees – and successful students.

Smith firmly believes in building connections to everything the students learn. One day students might be picking olives, the next day they are doing maths about it - such as calculating averages or how much they have picked.

“We are building learning experiences. You never get bored, you always try to think of something else,” Smith says.

The bee-friendly girls, in the meantime, are thrilled to leave the country for the first time.
While Principal Smith thinks going overseas will be life-changing for them, the girls hope their hard work will pay off.

“We have a good chance of maybe winning,” the girls say.

“There are way more bees around in our community, in town and in our school. We are very proud of ourselves.”

But according to Smith, what is more important than winning is the girls’ overseas learning experience and “the morale of the bees”.

“When the beehives are happy and reproduce, then everyone is happy,” he says.