Palmerston North teacher Beverley Procter retires after musical career

Retiring teacher Beverley Procter with Charli, her 15-month-old chihuahua. Photo / Judith Lacy

If your hands automatically go to your ears when you hear the word recorder, Beverley Procter has some advice.

Teach your children to never blow the instrument - tonguing is all the breath you need, just a little puff of air.

She started teaching at Palmerston North's Parkland School in 1975 and has just retired from the same school. Before Parkland, she taught at Russell Street, Monrad Intermediate and Takaro schools.

In 1999, Procter was seconded to the music department of Massey University's College of Education. She taught curriculum music on a series of short-term contracts and was backwards and forwards to Parkland and Massey. About 2007, then Parkland principal Derek Marriott asked her to set up a music programme - a part-time role. She taught the children composition, arranging and playing percussion instruments.

She's decided to retire now as an injury to her right shoulder makes moving instruments around challenging. She loved the job, kids and colleagues and says Parkland has always been a great school.

"My dream job but the body told me it was time to walk away."

Leaving is a wrench after such a long attachment to the school.

She has taught the children of former students. Asked how that felt, Procter said "wonderful".

"It was nice that my former pupils were happy for me to teach their kids, it could have been different."

Born in Wellington, she moved to Ohakune when she was 3. When she was 13 the family moved to Whanganui and she did her secondary schooling at Whanganui Girls' College. Afterwards, she moved to Palmerston North for teachers' college and never left the city.

While there was a brief flirtation when she was about 6 with dental nursing, she has never really wanted to do anything else.

"Kids are kids, I love kids and all through my teaching career I have always, always loved the kids I've taught. But yes, there are more behavioural problems than before."

Procter, who turns 77 in January, will continue to teach her all-ages ukulele group Ukes on the Terrace and remain part of the ukulele band The Strumpettes.

She has one son in Bluff, one in Rangiora and a daughter in Rongotea, plus six grandchildren. She plans to spend time in her garden and greenhouse - her happy place.

Procter remembers in her first year of teaching the principal coming into her classroom at 3.30pm, asking "haven't you got a home to go to?" The workload teachers carry now is enormous, arriving at 7.30am and leaving at 5pm plus weekend work, she says. Greater communication with parents has increased the workload.

"There seem to be meetings for everything these days."

Even on holiday teaching is on teachers' minds - they will see something and think it would be great to do with their kids. "You're a teacher 24/7, 365 days of the year really."

She remembers Russell Street School having three classes for deaf students - their mothers had rubella when they were pregnant with them. The students wore a bib on their front with their hearing aid battery in the pocket and wires running up to the hearing aid.
While teachers encouraged the hearing and non-hearing students to mix, the latter tended to stick to themselves.

"They really were outsiders in their own school."

The contagious viral infection is pretty much wiped out now in New Zealand thanks to vaccination.

Procter remembers visiting a girl at the polio hospital in Whanganui who was in an iron lung. All you could see was her head. She is very aware vaccination is why we don't have polio now.

"Vaccines have a huge part to play in eradicating diseases."