Brown Brother Response

We were very pleasantly surprised last week when Room 20 received an email about our responses to Joshua Iosefo's Brown Brother poem. And can you guess who the email was from?....Joshua's mother. We greatly appreciated her taking the time to write to us and the encouragement she gave us. Perhaps we might have some budding poets in our class too.
Here is the email she sent us.

Talofa Ms Squires and Room 20,

My name is Fetaui Iosefo and I was reading your classes blogs on the Joshua Iosefos  'spoken word-brown brother'.  We as a family read Osana, Kingstons, and today I read Sylvia and Melvins and decided that I would take some time out and email your class and your teacher to say how very proud I am of you all for showing great understanding of Joshua Iosefo's 'spoken word'.

I am Joshuas mother and it wasn't so long ago he was the same age as yourselves.  He didn't have a blog like you all do but he would write into a journal all his thoughts some were like poetic prayers and others were scribbles of inspiration he would pick up from people, or books he was reading.  We were encouraged by reading your blogs of the inspirations you all had chosen to keep in your heart and mind from Joshuas 'brown brother-spoken word'.

We think you are a fabulous class and have super fabulous teacher, we wish you all the very best for the future.

Kia Manuia

Fetaui Iosefo

Brown Brother Response by Crusader

Joseph Iosefo "Brown Brother"

Joshua Iosefo, a prefect a Mt. Roskill Grammar, wrote a motivational speech called “Brown Brother”. The first time he performed it was at his school. When he did his speech, his mate Rashad made a video and put it on youtube which then got the attention of Campbell Live. After that,  he got the opportunity to perform it on live t.v.

This speech had a message to it, and it was telling the brown people especially to stop limiting yourself by listening to the stereotypes because they are not true. Some messages in his speech relate to some of the messages that we have at our school here such as, Strive to succeed, Champions never Give Up and much more.

 My response to this speech is that, brown people like me can do anything you want as long as you have determination in what you do. It doesn’t have to be a sportstar or a music person but you can be anything else like a lawyer or even the next Prime Minister.

Here is the link to Joshua Iosefo's poem "Brown Brother"

Brown Brother Response by Lesley

Brown brother

Standing on the stage  was a Mt Roskill grammar prefect, Joshua Losefo preparing to say his talk. It came to the time where he had begin his speech but instead he had written up a poem called “Brown Brother”.While he was saying it some people were inspired. One of his friends  put up his poem on Youtube where we were lucky that it came  to the attention of Campbell Live.

The title of his poem was  "Brown Brother".He started his poem off with describing about his colour skin then he got into his main message it was to not listen to stereotypes, stereotypes is about a group of people whereby we attribute a set of characteristics to the group. In part of the poem  it relates to our Point England School korero (it our way to succeed ) which are : Champions Never Give Up, Strive to Succeed and most of all Herenga ki te Whetu which means Reach for the Stars .He also mentioned that some positive things about stereotype like we all love P.E,music,dance and drama.

When I watched it I thought I knew the meaning will be that  we should not limit ourselves and try our best, also to not be afraid to change and that you don't need to be like everybody else because if you do you won’t have a chance to shine. I felt inspired watching him saying that poem.