LIFE CHANGE
Principal’s full-time siren sounds
An innovative educational leader, his passion and commitment to his Feilding primary school has been unwavering during nearly two decades at the helm.
After 16 years in the job, and 43 years in the district, Manchester St principal Rex Wheeler has sounded the full-time siren, but retires knowing he never lost sight of why he became a teacher.
A standing ovation last month by more than 600 people at the Feilding and District Excellence in Business Awards congratulated a man respected and appreciated in his community.
He’s transformed Feilding’s oldest primary school into the first enviroschool in the district, ignited a literacy programme for ‘‘sandpit boys’’ and introduced core values designed to develop young people of outstanding character.
For Wheeler, 63, there was no better place to end his career. He started a life in education at Manchester St School as a pupil in 1959, coming full circle to finish as principal at the end of term 3 this year.
‘‘I am a Feilding boy,’’ Wheeler says. ‘‘Believe it or not, my father also went to Manchester St School.’’
He recalls tall, dark walls and being sent out of a classroom as a young, freshfaced 5-year-old. ‘‘I remember hearing the footsteps of the principal walking down this big, long corridor and getting a telling off.’’
In his junior years, he remembers a teacher saying if he didn’t pull his socks up he’d be in big trouble. ‘‘I bent down, pulled my socks up and got into bloody trouble. I couldn’t understand what was going on.’’
In a career that started at Halcombe School in 1974, he’s taught at seven other Manawatu¯ primary schools since.
That includes stints at Sanson School, Marton Primary, South Makirikiri, Waituna West, Mt Biggs, Rongotea and Tawhero School. ‘‘I’ve stayed fairly local.’’
It was at Halcombe he was told by a stern principal that ‘‘in future, Mr Wheeler, you should always wear a shirt and tie’’.
At Sanson, he battled Skyhawks and Harvards flying in and out of Ohakea Air Force Base. One morning, after a particularly frustrating experience, Wheeler called the air base after a lowflying jet caused his classroom clock to fall off the wall and break. ‘‘I said: ‘I want a new clock. Who’s paying for it?’ It was a wee bit of a joke.’’
At Whanganui’s Tawhero School, his eyes were opened to how the other half lived – those that couldn’t afford meals.
Although he had some lifechanging experiences at those schools, it was at Manchester St that he really made a school his own.
His first point of call was lighting the school with colour. Bright colours bring energy and anything beat the dull nothingness consuming the school before his arrival in 2001.
‘‘It was a typical, large, bland school. From the outside there was a lot of vandalism and it was sort of institutionalised colours. It looked very bare which I didn’t like at all.’’
And so the school was painted – the fences, the buildings, even the newsletters.
He introduced the ‘‘stylised rainbow’’, which was chosen to be the school logo. Red, yellow, green and blue – the four colours of the rainbow – represent the four school houses. Each one represents a core value: Red, caring for each other; yellow, caring about learning; green, caring for the environment; and blue, the sea of life.
In 2002, Wheeler transitioned it into an enviroschool.
‘‘Learning is based around positive relationships. My view is holistic – that you can’t ask a kid inside to give you their best, to give you quality, if what they’re surrounded by outside isn’t up to standard.’’
The school pool was ‘‘knackered’’ and pupils could use the Makino Aquatic Centre down the road. Instead of ordering a new filtration system, Wheeler turned the area into a nursery. Manawatu¯ ’s first enviroschool was born.
It wasn’t just about planting trees or picking up litter. Wheeler expected pupils to respect their surroundings and each other. ‘‘It’s about caring for each other. I wanted rows of shoes to be toe to the wall, the grass cut to the edge of the concrete, because that’s a good environment.’’
Wheeler and his wife Sandra had a plan to travel the world at the end of his 63rd year. However, his family was thrown into disarray in 2015 when Sandra was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
One afternoon she came home from work with a splitting headache. Scans revealed an aggressive tumour already well developed. She underwent surgery at Wellington Hospital soon after, however, they couldn’t get it all.
The family opted for quality of life, not quantity.
Instead of travelling the world, the family gathered every Sunday night for a cultural dinner. Each week, they’d set the scene by cooking a meal from a different country, dress the part and even play music.
‘‘We were bringing the countries here. We’d have a bit of a laugh and drink tequila or whatever it was that week.’’ Sandra died last year.
‘‘Life has changed. It’s a different place to what it used to be,’’ Wheeler says. ‘‘As a family we moved through positively, as much as we could.
‘‘I had to have a bit of a think after that. [Retirement] has given me the opportunity to let anything that comes my way, to fall my way.’’
He’s volunteered with St John for more than 50 years and holds an array of regional and national governance positions. Starting as a cadet when he was 11, he drove ambulances for 30 years while teaching. Some nights he’d be responding to callouts with only one or two hours sleep before teaching the next day.
‘‘I was only ever late to school once, though.’’
In his garage sits two retired ambulances – a 1976 Dodge and 1982 Bedford. Next to them sits a 1937 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk, which he is in the midst of reconditioning.
‘‘My aim is to go through until Christmas doing what I’m doing – playing on cars and whatever else. Then I have no idea.’’
‘‘My aim is to go through until Christmas doing what I’m doing – playing on cars and whatever else. Then I have no idea.’’