In a class of THEIR OWN

Kerre awards top marks to our dedicated educators

We can all, no matter our age, remember the name of our favourite teacher. The one who made us feel special. The one who opened a world of possibility to us. The one who taught us far more than the lessons they had prepared for their class.

I will be forever grateful to those men and women who challenged me to do better and to be better. To not just settle but to dare to try for more. It’s more than 40 years since I was in a classroom, but the memories of those inspiring men and women are very real to me.

My mum was a teacher and she was passionate about her job. She found ways to teach any child, no matter how difficult they might have found school. When some children found the school readers that talked of Mum and Dad taking the family to the beach for a picnic totally fantastical and unrelatable, given their family backgrounds, Mum got them reading the sports pages in the paper and writing letters to their sporting heroes. She was great at finding a way of connecting with kids from all backgrounds.

I thought about becoming a teacher, but I knew I wouldn’t have the patience. And I would have had favourites. I’d have been terrible. All for the better I left it to the professionals. And those professionals have never been so important as they are right now.

When you see how many children are suffering because of the years they’ve been away from school, you understand just how important our school days are. They may not be the best time of your life, but they help shape the adult you become.

In the North Island, and in Auckland particularly, so many young people missed out on vital years of learning and socialising – and sporting competitions and cultural festivals. They will never get those years back.

It must have been awful for the teachers too, trying to keep a class together over Zoom, trying to foster a spirit of trust and trying to get children to learn the magic of discovery through a screen.

I take my hat off to those dedicated teachers who did their level best to give the kids some semblance of normality through those mad and crazy pandemic years.

And then, just when you hope things are starting to get back on track, that we can start to put the years of disruption behind us, along come weather events and schools are shut down again.

I railed against that on the radio. I felt that the children weren’t being prioritised. Again. That just about everything was more important these days than children getting an education. And I got slammed for not taking the weather forecasters seriously and harangued for putting people at risk. That was not my message, but I’m a trained communicator and if I have to explain the message, I clearly didn’t get it out there properly. That’s on me.

I hope the teachers get the help and support they need to educate all of our children – the orthodox, the out-of-left-field, the ones who need someone to care for them. Their job today is so much harder than it was yesterday. If we invested in our families and our schools, we wouldn’t have to spend nearly as much on our jails or our prisons.

So in the wake of the recent teachers’ strike, I hope they get the resources and the funding that they need to do the job they are desperately needed to do. Sometimes a good teacher offers the only chance for children to change their reality for the better.

I thought about becoming a teacher, but I knew I wouldn’t have the patience. And I would have had favourites