Teacher leaving ‘home’

Palmerston North teacher Kaye Webber went from having second thoughts about working at her school to setting a record for being the longest-serving staff member.

Webber is retiring at the end of the term after 37 years at Palmerston North Intermediate Normal School and 40 years in education.

At 62, she said 40 years of classroom teaching was enough, but she would continue to do some relieving.

She said 37 years was a record at the school for length of employment at Intermediate Normal. The school has had six principals since 1941 and Webber has worked under four of them.

When she first started at the school, having been placed there by the education board, she had wanted to stay at a previous job, but her attitude quickly changed.

‘‘I love this school. It’s home for me.’’ Webber’s first teaching job was for one year at Halcombe School, the same primary school she had attended.

‘‘The last place I wanted to go.’’

In those days the education board decided where teachers were sent.

It was then on to a two-year posting at

Feilding Intermediate School, which she enjoyed, before shewas sent to Intermediate Normal.

‘‘I didn’t want to come here, I wanted to stay in Feilding. I got a permanent job and then I never left.’’

There had been big changes in education over the years, particularly with technology. When she started films had to come from Wellington to watch in class and be run by a projectionist.

‘‘That was about all the audiovisual we had.’’

She said children were the same today as when she started, although they were more in control of their goal setting now.

There are far more children at the school now who have English as their second language, something the school celebrates every year.

She said the school curriculum was always getting fuller, with teachers expected to do more.

Webber has been involved in the teachers’ union working to improve teaching conditions and was also heavily involved in social studies at a national level, writing the curriculum.

In the 1980s she had a two-year teacher exchangeworking at Nowra Public School in Australia, two hours south of Sydney, in the early 2000s she was seconded to work at teachers’ college and in 2009 did a sabbatical to the UK and Europe.

The sabbaticalwas focused on voter turnout in New Zealand and she looked at whether European schools encouraged children to be active citizens and vote.

School camps are something she has always enjoyed, while she’s loved being involved with the performing arts, particularly dance and drama.

She was the teacher in charge of hockey for 25 years and helped set up when the school first started going to the Aims Games sports tournament.