Colin Watkins has retired as Westbrook School's principal after 18 years, and more than 50 years in education. Photo / Kelly Makiha
It’s school assembly. The Madagascar movie’s hit song I Like to Move It blares from the speakers.
In bursts Westbrook School principal Colin Watkins, dancing like the ultimate embarrassing father.
The kids roar with laughter at his cringey dance moves and zany yellow costume that’s oozing with the school’s Karamu house colour pride.
He takes the microphone and there’s a respectful hush as the kids sit upright, ready to hang on his every word.
This has been an assembly ritual at the Rotorua school every two weeks, and the response never wanes.
Watkins’ commanding presence ends this year as he retires after 18 years at the helm.
Calling time on his nearly 50 years in education was not a decision the inspirational principal took lightly.
The 68-year-old told the Rotorua Daily Post he still had plenty to give, but now was the time to give more to himself and his family.
Never backwards in coming forwards, Watkins has been a proverbial pain for successive Governments and education ministers throughout his career.
He has questioned, debated and argued countless educational decisions.
He also admits part of him is tired of fighting.
He said being a teacher was more than a fulltime job.
“You are working every minute of the day and half the night … Now I want to look after myself.”
Watkins’ passion for teaching ignited when he was a 12-year-old at his grandmother’s house.
She showed him a scrapbook of cards and letters given to his late uncle, teacher Ted Rhodes, after he died.
They were from parents and pupils expressing their gratitude for the influence Rhodes had on them.
“I was at that influential adolescent age reading those, and that was quite moving for me.”
The potential career path came to him again at secondary school when Watkins was invited to travel to the North Shore to visit a teachers’ college.
“I was at Whangārei Boys’ High School and the bus that was going down was taking interested boys and girls from Whangārei Girls’ High. Well, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to get on a bus with a whole lot of girls.”
That was in 1974, and Watkins started to believe his dream of teaching could be a reality. “The rest is history.”
He was 20 when he got his first teaching job at Raumanga Intermediate School in Whangārei, where he remained for six years.
Next was a sole-charge position at Karetu School, near Kawakawa, followed by a deputy principal role at what was then Raumanga Primary.
In 1989, aged 32, he was appointed to his first principal role, at Ōrākei School in Auckland. It was the first year of boards of trustees, which Watkins described as a “minefield”.
“We had a board meeting once a week that went for five hours, and the paperwork was unbelievable.”
After four years, he moved back to Whangārei because he “hated” Auckland, becoming principal of Otangarei School.
He described the deprivation in that Whangārei suburb as immense.
“It’s a Black Power stronghold, and taxis refused to go to the community because of the levels of violence.”
He set to work alongside community leader Martin Kaipo, a former Black Power president. They worked on Te Āwhiowhio o Ōtangarei Trust, which helped in a range of social services.
The trust brought together agencies working in different areas, and he said it achieved some remarkable results. Kaipo was honoured in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours for his services to social work.
“Those 10 years sharpened my skillset around people management,” Watkins said.
“I worked hard to attract teachers into a community that teachers didn’t want to work in, and it became a mainstream school of choice. We went from a role of 100 to 350.”
Watkins butted heads with the Ministry of Education many times during that period.
“They wanted us to send our kids to intermediate, but we refused … it was illegal, really, but we knew no one else was going to meet their needs. After two years, the ministry finally allowed us to have them [intermediate classes].”
It was a rewarding time, and he learnt to adapt his leadership style.
“I was a bit of a gung-ho leader before. I would charge into enemy lines, but that was a leadership style destined for failure because, when that type of charismatic person leaves, there is no one else to follow. Instead, I tried to evolve and bring people along with me to ensure every voice is heard.”
Watkins said there had been 20 elections in the six decades of his teaching career, and education had been used as a political football each time.
New Zealand had not been able to settle on a curriculum for many years.
Before the 1980s, he believed New Zealand had one of the best education systems in the world, but “knee-jerk” changes by a variety of governments had spoiled that.
He said both left-wing and right-wing governments had got it wrong over the years.
He told Labour’s former Education Minister Trevor Mallard that he had made a huge mistake in closing small country schools, and it was a long-standing joke that another of Labour’s former education ministers, Steve Maharey, told Watkins: “No one will die wondering what you think, Colin.”
Watkins turned down an invitation to stand in local politics, saying he preferred to express his opinions to improve education.
The current political scene has perhaps nudged his resignation along.
“This current Government is more determined than most to drive through an agenda I don’t agree with.”
Past issues also still irked him too.
Don’t get him talking about “white flight” - particularly a period in the 1980s that he described as the most damaging in New Zealand’s history.
“Attitudes changed, and I could never understand why. Suddenly, Pākehā didn’t want their kids going to school with their Māori neighbours.” The roll at the school where he was teaching dropped from 400 to 200 over two years “because all the white kids left”.
New Zealand never recovered from that shift in attitude, he said.
Anything that reeks of double standards or racial privilege still winds Watkins up.
He puts that down to his upbringing in the small area of Portland, near Whangārei.
A mix of Māori and Pākehā lived in the area, but no one knew the difference.
“We were all just brothers and sisters.”
Those values of respecting everyone around you, no matter the skin colour, shaped Watkins’ approach to life.
He said the Peter Ellis case, in which the Christchurch childcare worker was wrongly convicted of child abuse, also had a massive impact on teaching today.
“Men walked away from the job. That balance of gender is not there now. We can’t seem to attract men back to the profession, and that is a tragedy.”
For many children, a male teacher was the only positive male role model in their lives, he said.
Two men shaped Watkins’ life.
His father, Keith, was Portland’s fire chief, and Watkins described him as being the unofficial mayor. Anyone who wanted help would go to Keith Watkins.
His other great influence was Peter Hickling, then deputy principal of Raumanga Intermediate, where Watkins started his career in 1978.
“He was an inspiration in terms of developing relationships with people, and he knew how to get into the heads of adolescent kids at that crucial intermediate age.”
Despite being a Northlander through and through, Watkins wanted a new challenge, so he applied for Westbrook School’s principalship.
“I wanted to see if my experience and leadership style could benefit a larger community.”
He led the school through countless successes and likes to think he helped children achieve in not just academics but also arts and sport.
“We can’t all be doctors and lawyers, so it’s about nurturing the inner strengths of everyone so they can all be successful in their own rights.”
He was the Rotorua Principals’ Association president for five years and this year became a life member.
He’s also led the school through difficult times, including the sudden deaths of two teachers from the same classroom, only a year apart.
Watkins designed a trauma management model and wrote a paper on it for other principals to use if faced with the same tragedies.
As he takes on a new life away from the classrooms and staffrooms, Watkins said he looked forward to spending more time with his children, grandchildren and wife, Dana, who is a teacher at Westbrook.
“It has been the most challenging and demanding job imaginable, but it’s also been the most rewarding,” he said.
He described himself as never being the best at anything, but he was proud of his teaching career.
“I was a second XV rugby player. Most sports and challenges, I have come second or third, but what I have achieved in education, I am incredibly proud of.”
He was humbled by feedback from former pupils since announcing his retirement earlier this year.
“It hasn’t been so much about learning to read or write, it’s about how I’ve empowered them to become successful citizens, and that is what I want as my legacy.”
As he closes the book on his career, he wouldn’t change a thing.
“It’s been a beautiful ride.”
Kelly Makiha is a senior journalist who has reported for the Rotorua Daily Post for more than 25 years, covering mainly police, court, human interest and social issues.