Travelling teachers learn plenty of lessons in life
Experience the best education anyone can get
David and Elizabeth van Zanten have been discovering new frontiers beyond Whanganui. “What I take out of all this is how similar we all are, how fascinating everything is if you go in with an open mind, but how flavoured we all are with the country we’re in,” David says. “We have a bias going in to most places.”
In a former life, David was head of mathematics at Whanganui Collegiate School and Elizabeth was a wellestablished, accolade-gathering artist.
Then the travel bug bit. There was a vacancy in Oman for a teacher, a job that suited David, and also a teaching position that would be perfect for Elizabeth.
David describes the fouryear stint as an amazing experience.
He remembers one lunchtime during his orientation week, seeing on a school TV screen, among sport and news items, an ad for MTV, featuring scantily clad young women gyrating to music, presented as what would be normal fare on the programme.
He was embarrassed on behalf of the West.
He says we are predisposed to a certain way of thinking, coloured by our exposure to whatever the media or “common knowledge” dishes up. Our impression of Middle Eastern culture around the treatment of women is not a good one, nor is it accurate, he says.
David was teaching at Hay Al-Sharooq International School, a large school owned by an oil company. He and Elizabeth lived off-campus.
“I was in charge of maths and I was deputy-principal after two and a half years. It was . . . 94 per cent Arab [students], where it used to be half ex-pats.”
Teaching secondary — while Elizabeth was teaching primary school — his students were reasonably competent in English, having come through an English-learning programme. David and Elizabeth had to learn Arabic. He was called “Mr David”.
“They don’t use surnames over there. From their point of view, it’s respectful.”
While they were there, the Sultan of Oman, who had been ruling for 44 years, was taken ill and went abroad for some time for treatment.
“When he came back, they had two days of national holiday because the Sultan had returned. They shut down every business and every school to celebrate that. They were out in their cars, tooting, laughing, smiling, singing and celebrating. It was incredible.”
David tried to imagine that happening in New Zealand.
He had heard only good things about the Sultan, about his love for his people and the country. The adulation, he says, was deserved.
“He is seriously about doing it for his people: they need to see him, he will listen to them.”
From what David could see, it was not about politics or power. That Sultan has since died, but he was able to pick his successor who lives by similar rules.
David taught the upper levels of the school and had to get used to endless sunshine and heat.
“In the last two and a half years we were there, it did not rain once.”
David became transition manager when a new $US30 million ($44m) school was built next door with a bigger student capacity. When the old school closed, company politics, contractual complications and legal obligations intervened and the upshot was that David and 86 of his colleagues lost their Oman teaching positions.
David applied for a job at Yew Chung International School of Shanghai, China, and he got it. Hoping to use his new job offer as leverage to stay teaching in Oman, the ploy did not work and China became his new place of employment.
After a holiday in New Zealand, David took up his position in Shanghai. His job as head of maths, replacing a department head of longstanding, was to improve the school’s marks and perceived position in mathematics. That meant working on the staff as well as the students, changing attitudes and ways of teaching.
He was there for two and a half years. Western food was easy to find and beer from almost anywhere in the world was plentiful and cheap. “We loved to travel there.” Public transport could take you anywhere you wanted to go, or you could use the Uber equivalent, Didi.
“Then, for the last six months, only because I was still in the country, another school offered me a job in Qingdao.”
The school was Malvern College, a British international school, and David was deputy head of Foster boarding house and maths teacher. Qingdao is more rural and much harder to access Western food.
His long stay overseas has changed his perspective of many things. Personal experience is by far the best teacher.
“I felt safe in Oman and China, any time of the day or night, anywhere.”
He says all his colleagues, men and women, agree. David tells the story of a man turning up at the school in Oman with a mobile phone and wallet that he had found in a cafe. His inquiries led him to discover the property belonged to a Western woman who might have been a school teacher.
This man took a day off work to go around all the schools, looking for the owner. It took him all day and most of the evening to find her. He asked for no reward: he just did not want a Westerner to have a bad experience in Oman. She was delighted to get her things back. David asks: would that happen here?
David and Elizabeth have moved to Dunedin where David has found a position with King’s High School. He started there at the beginning of this term.
“I would love for everyone to have the chance to do something overseas . . . to go and live somewhere and experience that culture.”