Jacob Rangi at the beginning of a three-year teaching degree.
Jacob Rangi at the beginning of a three-year teaching degree.
Sixty people have been introduced to life as students at the University of Auckland's primary school teaching campus in Whangarei.
Their three-year course began this week with two days of orientation at the Faculty of Education Tai Tokerau campus in Alexander St. Second and third-year student teachers were on handto introduce the new intake to the facilities and processes they will use.
The faculty offers two degrees of equal status, one a mainstream primary and intermediate level teacher qualification and the other with the addition of Huarahi Maori, for students wanting to teach te reo in bilingual or Maori immersion schools, campus co-ordinator Lindsay Laing said.
Mr Laing described the number of Maori and male students enrolling as "exciting".
"We will never get gender balance but we need more male primary school teachers and we're getting numbers up again."
Some of the students without prior qualifications got in to the course through Auckland University's New Start bridging programme which prepares them for tertiary education.
Jacob Rangi at the beginning of a three-year teaching degree.
First-year student Jacob Rangi signed up for the Huarahi course to become a qualified, te reo-fluent teacher after several years working as a teacher's aide and with troubled youngsters.
"I've always had a passion for working with kids and I'm ready now to get a teaching qualification, but I'm doing the Huarahi course for myself," he said. "My aim is to live a life where I can speak in Maori, write in Maori and teach in Maori every day."
Mr Rangi said he was also motivated to qualify as a teacher to encourage his two children, aged 10 and 7, "to have goals and dreams".
"It's never too late. I'm 100 per cent sure this is what I want to do."
Third-year student Moana Rankin was a single parent with five children when she began to question how the education system was meeting their needs.
Ms Rankin chose to be a fulltime mother while her children were young but with three of them now graduated from or still in tertiary education, she can turn her interest in primary education into a career path.
"Too many Maori kids are failing. Instead of moaning about it, I told myself 'think about what you can do'. This degree is a ticket to get me to those kids."
Faculty of Education Tai Tokerau graduating students will be capped on March 27. Their parade to the graduand ceremony at Forum North leaves Laurie Hall car park at noon.
