I have loved my time at Te Puna Wai o Waipapa and I have been thoroughly spoiled working with lots of kind and great colleagues, amazing ākonga and caring whānau.

On starting at Hagley in 1997:

Sometimes when you pick up the phone, you have life changing experiences. That’s what happened to me one day while I was teaching at Lincoln High School. It was lunch time and I received a call from Peja Street from Hagley. I was the National President of the Careers/Transition Association and Peja wanted to know if I knew of anyone who would like to take on her position as Careers Advisor for one year while she took on a new position as Director of Students. I got off the phone, thought about it, weighed up the risk of leaving a permanent position to go to a fixed term one, talked to Bernie ....... and the rest is history.

Hagley is a place that is hard to leave once you have arrived. I have been privileged to serve all the kaimahi at Te Puna Wai o Waipapa over my 24 years and to be part of two wonderful senior leadership teams. We are so fortunate we are in the centre of the city, so handy to lots of exciting resources and now beautiful new cultural narratives all around us for place-based learning. Ōtautahi is coming back strongly and Te Puna Wai o Waipapa is at the centre of this.

Ros’s wide involvement in the education community within and beyond Hagley

I have loved being part of the greater education community and have been on many boards and committees to make learning better for our ākonga. Some of these are the National Association of Careers and Transition, the Thorrington Primary and Cashmere High School Boards, the Youth Futures Committee, Pitcaithly House Board, the Aspiring Principals course, Chair of the Assistant and Deputy Principals group, Principals Group (when acting Principal), kaiako workload team, EQ teams that were established to look at Collaboration of Learning centres and the Stewardship Group of our kāhui ako.

At Hagley, I have been involved with the staffing committee, teaching and learning team, whānau and te Urungi rōpū, supported the development of the School of Music and the growing of the Māori department to four kaiako. I have supported the introduction of the early childhood education course and sat on the advisory rōpū. STEM in Science, especially to encourage Māori ākonga has been a PLD push in the last two years. HALC, Forte, international ākonga, provisionally certificated kaiako and English Language Learning have always had my support and I have spent many hours making sure these areas are running smoothly.

Te Puna Wai o Waipapa offers many of our learners individual programmes that are scaffolded to meet learning differences and needs. The celebration of learning is so important and to welcome whānau to these events is something I think is a great aspect of Hagley and makes learning fun.

I would like to thank everyone at Te Puna Wai o Waipapa for their support over all my years and wish you all well for the future. I will take a keen interest in keeping up with the Hagley news.