Which hemisphere am I in?
As a small Area School many of our seniors didn’t have the full spectrum of subjects to study in school itself. Many were using Te Kura, but at that time without the immediacy of what the VLN could offer. So, to get the ‘free’ subjects for our students I was offered up as a teacher sacrifice. My specialism in the UK had been Religious Studies and Psychology, my specialism in New Zealand was Social Studies. So why not offer psychology as a subject on the VLN. The rest as they say is history.
Sitting in front of a TV and a dated camera turned into using a computer and all that that entailed. The subject of psychology grew beyond my wildest dreams. I was the first teacher to offer it outside of large schools and in 2007 I was one of but a handful of psychology teachers across the country as a whole. The classes were always full and oversubscribed. The opportunity to study something so different to what they had already been exposed to was just too enticing! And in 2023 it is still very much the same.
In 2016 I returned to the motherland but psychology through NetNZ ‘followed me’. I returned part way through an academic year so it made sense to carry on teaching my groups. Now, 7 years on I carry on teaching psychology through NetNZ because I love it! I enjoy the challenge it provides me – it allows me to inspire students to explore human behaviour and the complexities of the human mind. It challenges me to find new and innovative ways of imparting information, encouraging independent research, and learning from students. It also challenges me to stay up late enough at night to teach in the morning in NZ 
. I have learned to use a number of different platforms for communication with students. I currently use Padlet and Google Drive.
In many ways my challenges are just like any other teacher for NetNZ, keeping students engaged, their minds and work on track and the work relevant and meaningful. While the time difference is a challenge, students in the 21st century (and some edeans) want an immediate response to their questions. That certainly doesn’t happen if I am fast asleep! I generally find the students that don’t cope are ones that don’t cope with distance learning anyway. What I can bring to the subject from Britain is a greater depth of resources that NZ students wouldn’t normally have access to.
Two things have stuck with me over the years. The first is a comment made by one of my first students in my first cohort in the article linked below.
And the second was by the father of a student I had a few years later. Said father rang me, very cross, complaining I was giving his daughter too much work to do and too much reading (in the early days I always made it VERY clear how much reading there would be!). His daughter ploughed through it all, sticking out and achieving well at both level 2 and level 3 before going on to University to study psychology. After her first semester, the same father emailed me, to thank me! For preparing his daughter for university! I had been the only teacher to give her the chance to explore academic work at undergraduate level and she had found it incredibly useful at Uni.
Photo Credits: Background Photo by Anni Roenkae