Cindy Frew is Hagley’s new Tourism teacher, although ‘new’ probably isn’t the right word. Cindy’s links with Hagley go back to 2009 when she came here as a student teacher, followed by day-relieving in various departments and teaching English Language Learning.

Cindy’s pathway into teaching has taken an interesting route.  After Travel and Tourism training at the Auckland University of Technology and working as a retail travel and foreign exchange consultant, Cindy lived in London for almost six years, working and travelling. It was an experience in London whilst working as a volunteer, teaching English in an inner city primary school, that led Cindy to want to become a teacher. On returning to New Zealand at the age of 28, Cindy dedicated herself to a very demanding schedule; studying full-time at UC, along with summer school papers, and working 20 to 30 hours per week at The Arts Centre, followed by teacher training whilst parenting two preschool children (she now has three children, under the age of 10). It was a huge juggle, but Cindy was determined to reach her goal of becoming a teacher, even when, at times, she felt like giving up because it was so hard balancing study with family life: “I tell my students not to give up on their studies, because if I had given up, I would not be happily standing here in the classroom with them now”.

The Tourism teaching position at Hagley is the ideal opportunity for Cindy to apply her previous career and expertise in the industry. She sees great potential in Tourism, as a subject which grabs students’ interest. This can be seen in her students’ different responses to the subject; from a few tentative hands up at the beginning of the year, when asking her classes who might be interested in a career in Tourism, to responses in a recent survey where 60% of students indicated that they wanted to work in this area.

With this level of student interest in Tourism, Cindy sees potential in broadening course design linked to a Tourism context. She gives the example of an activity where students research a NZ destination, develop an itinerary for a family holiday and then create a presentation for assessment via a Service IQ unit standard. This project could also create opportunities for blending in other subjects and assessments, including English, literacy and numeracy. Cindy sees this vocationally-based learning in Tourism as valuable, with students developing real life skills: “Tourism is a vibrant and exciting area, it’s a massive growth industry for New Zealand”.

Cindy also teaches English Language Learning, and Gateway, a structured workplace learning class. She’s recently moved her Gateway class from a conventional classroom into a teaching space with a range of high tables, lower desk furniture and couches. Cindy has observed significant shifts in working in a flexible learning space. Her students have preferred the different configurations as opposed to a regular classroom set-up. In the new teaching space, Cindy has seen greater levels of collaboration occurring between herself and her students and between the students themselves: “There’s certainly been more āko going on, with students teaching each other”.

Cindy is currently reading Lucy Hone’s book, What Abi Taught Us, which includes practical strategies for resilient grieving, and what stands out to Cindy is that when faced with adversity, we are all able to cope and have meaningful and productive lives when we have “humour, faith and spirituality, the presence of role models, a willingness to help others and an optimistic outlook”. Cindy tells her students, “I think you’re so lucky to come to Hagley. If I wasn’t a teacher here, I would be a student”. And she’s done that too over the last few years, taking After 3 classes at Hagley in Mixed Media Art, Japanese and Theatre Studies.