Rather than following a conventional teaching path, after graduating from teacher training at Otago University I took a job homeschooling three wonderful children at Branches Station, one hour and forty-five minutes up Skippers Canyon from Tāhuna Queenstown. I had an absolute ball – the highlight being our work processing and tanning possum skins, caught and skinned by the kids. Some days our first morning job was to check the possum lines together.
Although it was far from a typical classroom set-up or school day, I enjoyed the challenges that can come with small classes of mixed ages and levels. You have to get quite creative finding or making teaching resources, especially with limited internet access. Lots of my time then, and in my job now, was spent helping children navigate each day without punching their brother or sister, as they get very sick of spending so much time together.
A couple of years later, I found myself on the Chathams teaching at Te One School. With a roll of around fifty students, Te One is the largest of the three primary schools across the Chathams. Kaingaroa School, located at the top north-east side of Chatham Island, has just six students at present, while Pitt Island School hosts an impressive total of thirteen. School rolls fluctuate regularly as fishing or farming families come and go. At one stage last year, Kaingaroa School had just one student! There are no high schools here, so teens head to the North or South Island to attend boarding school.
Both Kaingaroa School and Pitt Island School are what you would call sole charge schools, with just a teaching principal who is supported by an administrator, caretaker and cleaner, although often school roles overlap. Principals sometimes become cleaners, the administrator ropes in their hubby or cousin to be the caretaker and, more likely than not, they are all also on the Board of Trustees. Currently, I am release teaching for one-and-a-half days a week at Kaingaroa School. This allows the principal time to plan lessons, sausage sizzles and school trips, order equipment, write the school newsletter and do all the book work required of every school principal. You really do go above and beyond when you are doing the work of a team, solo.
As one of only two relief teachers on the island over the last few years, I have at times had to travel quite some distance to get to school, sometimes driving an hour up the bumpy gravel road to get to Kaingaroa. Travelling in style, I’ve also flown in the five-seater Cessna plane or caught a fishing boat to teach at Pitt Island, sometimes staying for a week or more at a time.
To be completely honest, though, my first few days teaching on the Chathams were awful. I was completely overwhelmed, and my class was absolutely feral. It took a lot of patience, and some very firm teaching practice, but I was soon able to appreciate the wild and brave spirit of Chatham Islands children.
Children catch pigs on their way to the school bus and weka hidden in the flax at lunch. On Pitt Island, one wee boy brought to school a wild piglet he had caught over the weekend and kept as a pet – it also slept in his bed! This boy’s brother brought a whole cooked cold roast mutton in his bag for lunch. One student once cornered, caught, then released back outside, a seagull that had wandered into our classroom during a play break. Children are ferociously protective of each other and are always willing to put up a fight for their friends and family. The Chatham Islands are a fantastic place to teach children the resourcefulness, resilience and work ethic they need to take on the big wide world far away from this little speck on the map.
Glossary. Weka, a brown-feathered, flightless but fast-running bird.
This story featured in our Ngahuru Autumn 2026 Edition.
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