Because Te Wānanga o Aotearoa has a strong sense of social justice new Te Kei Te Aukaha Taunaki (Head Educational Support), Emma Brodie thinks she’s working in the perfect place.

Emma is not a stranger to the wānanga having worked previously as the Te Tai Tonga Academic Manager.

The role saw her managing the delivery of wānanga programmes over almost 30 sites and ensuring they met quality and audit requirements.

Prior to that she was the Kaiako Matua for the Social Work programme, also with Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.

A week in to her new job she’s already excited about what lies ahead.

“It’s great because this role is predominantly about tauira, things like tauira registry, tauira support services and tauira complaints.”

Emma, who has a previous background in health and social work, said she was attracted to Te Wānanga o Aotearoa because of its principles and what she says is its strong sense of social justice.

“The whole purpose of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa was for kids who had been kicked out of school. “

“I liked school but wasn’t particularly good at it …but education has given me the opportunity to see there are creative ways to ensure our kaiako can be creative in the classroom.”

One of Emma’s buzzwords is “innovation”, which is something she says tauira should expect to see a lot of as a result of her input in her new role.

“We have an opportunity to really create some innovations because the new tumu have given us the green light to look for some creative ways to serve tauira.”

“Traditionally, winter is a time we get a lot of drop offs for tauira because it gets too hard so we are looking at things that are more responsive to our tauira needs.”

“This could mean creating shorter programmes so we can meet the needs of our communities better than we have in the past.”