Recently retired St Patrick's School principal Jurek Wypych chats to Mark Story about the vagaries of working more than four decades in an evolving education vocation.
Looking back at your tenure, how did it pan out compared with your dreams as an 18-year-old entering teachers' training college?
In 1977 when I
entered training college, teaching was a very popular career choice and I was lucky to be accepted. From my early days in Palmerston North, as a teenager in a class of over 300 others in the same position and experiencing student life for the first time, the focus was on sport, socialising, having fun, some lectures and lessons, socialising and more socialising. I never dreamed that I would be in the game for 42 years, with 32 of those as a principal.
On reflection, I could not have wished for a more rewarding career. In my time, of teaching in a number of city schools along the East Coast including a wonderful country stint at Wallingford School in the mid-80s, I have met some amazing people, made lifetime friends and have taught thousands of students - who mostly still say hello to me or reintroduce themselves to me if I bump into them - and have had a lot of fun and great times along the way.
So I can say it has panned out better than I could have imagined.
Name the worst move ever made by the Ministry of Education?
Which one?
To me, the worst thing that the MOE did over time was to constantly adopt "fads" as directed by each new government who wanted to stamp their mark on education and in doing so, often threw out sound teaching and learning practices that were then labelled as outdated . These new fads were often short-lived and without real substance, but looked good in glossy ministry booklets with coloured diagrams that had arrows pointing all over the place, but in fact had no funding or practical guidance on how they were meant to be implemented in the classroom.
And the ministry's best move?
The introduction of the NZ Curriculum, which gives schools an opportunity to reflect their local community and teach and provide learning opportunities accordingly. This is a single document that replaced a plethora of curriculum documents (one for each subject) that were unwieldy and vague.
The other thing that has seemed to have changed recently is the approach that both the Ministry and ERO now take with schools. They are now working alongside schools and the principal when assisting and evaluating how the school culture actually operates in its own unique environment instead of imposing their own agendas and judgments on them.
