4 minute read

Principal Q&A

keeping learning at the heart of the community

Samantha Mortimer

By Timmi Aplin-Barrett

Samantha Mortimer has been teaching for 25 years and began in Manchester in the UK.

She taught PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education), Citizenship and Sociology as well as working for the Local Authority as an advisory teacher. Samantha moved to New Zealand at the end of 2007 where she picked up a position within less than a week of landing. She was a Dean, Teacher in Charge, Assistant Principal and Deputy Principal at Te Aroha College. Now, she’s the principal of Greymouth High School, the West Coast’s biggest high school. She’s been there since January, 2021 and has been working hard to keep learning at the very heart of the community.

What brought you to Greymouth High School?

I was looking for a school whose values aligned with mine as a person, a teacher and a leader. Grey High’s values of Akoranga (learning), Respect, Community and Hauora (wellbeing), with equity at the centre drew me in. I was also looking for a community school where everyone is welcome and I love that GHS offers a wide range of different experiences for all of our rangatahi. These include classes for our scholarship students, a Kaupapa Māori class, a large Supported Learning Department, a Service Academy, Trades Academy, a Rainbow club and so on. I was also very excited that we have a good working relationship with Ngāti Waewae and our kaumatua at school is part of the local iwi. My interview with the board was fantastic; they made me feel welcomed and at home. I felt that they were “my people!” Everything they talked about resonated with me and who I am even when they were asking me tricky questions.

How do you work to connect the school to the community? What values do you see in this?

Our vision clearly states that we want Greymouth High School to be at the heart of learning in our community and that we want our students to make a positive difference in Māwhera.

We believe that working closely with our local community partners is key for the success of our students.

We put the learning and wellbeing of our students at the heart of everything we do and to do this we need to work with all of our community. Greymouth is a very supportive place and I have experienced nothing but kindness since I have arrived.

Our whānau want the best for their children and when we work together, we make great strides. The primary school principals and their staff agree that “their kids are our kids and our kids are their kids” and having those strong bonds is vital. We have strong connections to Ngāti Waewae which we are very grateful for. The generosity of our local businesses has been amazing to support our students financially and with opportunities for Gateway placements and work experience and we want to continue to develop our close relationships with other government and local agencies.

What’s been the most rewarding part of running this school?

We are very proud when we see all of our students continue to learn, grow and develop into amazing young people. I have been very appreciative of how our staff pulled together to keep our school open this year, for the most part, even though this was very difficult at times. I am also very proud that in the last couple of years we have done our utmost best to try to run all of our usual activities, even though we had to think outside of the box. For example, we still managed to have our prizegiving last year and athletics day this year, even though we had to run five in a row for both events.

It was very important to me that we could offer our students a range of opportunities wherever we could as learning is not just found inside a classroom.

We had to cancel a couple of things but for the most part we said “OK, how are we going to do this within the rules so our students could have some fun!”

I very much enjoy working with our Senior Leadership Team with our complementary strengths, as well as the rest of our staff.

What are you looking to achieve in the future with Greymouth High School?

We want Grey High to continue developing a fantastic learning culture where all of our rangatahi develop into great people and can achieve success whatever success looks like to them and their whānau.

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