New-to-Nayland part-time science teacher and former engineer Maggie Salmon joins us from Auckland where she taught for 17 years at St Cuthbert’s Presbyterian private girls school.

Part of Mrs Salmon’s job there was to teach International Baccalaureate physics to a very academically ambitious group, as well as general science.  She says teaching junior science at Nayland is quite a different ball game - and one that she's really enjoying.

“It’s been very interesting for me because I feel I’m almost going back to being a beginner teacher,” she reflected. “Thinking of those basics of how to cater for the extremes and how to keep [the students] all on task and interested. It’s really been quite an interesting learning curve.”

Mrs Salmon feels like she’s starting to settle in now she’s been here a few weeks. She’s enjoying the students as well as Nayland’s staff culture.   “I am just blown away by the staff at Nayland. They are just so friendly and they seem passionate about what they do. What’s really been interesting for me is the way so many staff members have their area of expertise over and above teaching.”

Maggie Salmon and her husband are originally from South Africa but they made Auckland home for 25 years. Though they’ve only been living in Nelson for a month, the couple has been wanting to move down to the South Island for a long time.

“We’re very much outdoors people and my husband was talking Wanaka, Queenstown but I was a bit iffy about that (...). I couldn’t quite recognise myself there. I guess I’ve always lived by the sea, that’s probably one of the things. But then out of the blue one day he said ‘what about Nelson?’ and it just clicked.”

With hobbies such as mountain biking and sea kayaking, Mrs Salmon has taken to life in Nelson quickly. She says she’s probably been swimming more in the month that she’s been in Nelson than she did in the last five years in Auckland, simply because of the logistical difficulties of getting around.

“Here in Nelson you pop down the hill and everything’s within a couple of kilometres. We were buying a bed and we walked into the bed shop and said ‘well, when can you deliver?’ and the salesman said ‘well, I drive the truck - when are you going home?’. We went home and an hour later the bed was there! In Auckland it would be ‘well, we only deliver to that area on Thursdays so you’ll have to wait to next Thursday.”