TE RANGIAIO Maihi makes four – the fourth generation of Erin Te Pou’s family to attend Te Kura o Te Paroa.
Erin is the school’s principal and this year Te Kura o te Paroa marks 125 years since it opened. So, she was delighted to welcome her niece, Te Rangiaio, when she started school for the first time last month.
Erin says while she didn’t go to Te Kura o Te Paroa as a student she has strong connections to the school dating back a long time before she got the principal’s job.
She always wanted to go the school because, when she was little, her grandparents – Bruce and Irene Simpson – lived a few hundred metres along Paroa Road.
With whakapapa, or genealogy, connecting him to the area, Bruce marked the family’s first generation to attend the school when he was enrolled in 1928.
Erin says her grandfather wouldn’t have stayed at school for very long because back then most of the students left school at an early age so they could start working, but he begun the legacy that is being continued by Te Rangiaio.
After leaving school, Bruce married Irene Stewart and together they had Aiden and Brian Simpson. Following in their father’s footsteps, Bruce’s two sons also enrolled at Te Kura o Te Paroa with Aiden’s first day in 1947 and his little brother Brian three years later in 1950.
Aiden died without children, but Brian went on to havethree daughters – Tania, Erin and Leonie. Now in his 70s he still works at Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi. Erin says only Leonie, who is the youngest of the siblings, attended Te Kura o Te Paroa because they were living in town when she and Tania attended primary.
“But I always wanted to come to this school because my nana was here, just down the road.”
So, when the principal’s job came up at the school in 2015, Erin didn’t hesitate to apply and her family was delighted when she was confirmed as Te Kura o Te Paroa’s first woman principal. It is a fact that her dad is particularly proud about – because Brian knows that a good education is vital.
His daughters have all gone on to achieve success through education – with Erin as a principal, Tania as a lawyer and Leonie as the chief executive at Te Runanga o Ngati Awa.
Erin says the three sisters have always understood that education was an important factor in life. “The biggest influence in education was our parents. I don’t know what they did or said to us but we all knew that we had to go and do something or learn to do something.”
She says when she left school, she moved to Auckland to take up a job taking blood from people at the hospital.
“But dad would constantly ring and ask what I was doing, in the end I told him I was going to training college. I had signed up for training college and the Navy.
“It wasn’t a career choice that I thought I was going to take but when I started training I thought, ‘this is what I am going to do with my life.’”
It is not only Brian who helped to shape Erin and her two sisters. Erin says her mother, Anne – who worked as a press secretary for Maori MP Koro Wetere until she retired – is a great advocate of education too and can often be found at Te Kura o Te Paroa helping the children with their reading.
As too were members of her wider family, including Brian’s aunty, Miria Simpson – the well-known Maori academic who became known as Taniwha No 1 for her formidable passion regarding the accuracy of te reo Maori.
Erin says she remembers Kuia Miria – as she calls her – as a staunch education advocate.
“She saw her role was to educate everyone in her family and it didn’t matter whether you were closely related or not. She would take people to things like the ballet or out to dinner because she believed in being able to educate us to be confident in both worlds.
“Sometimes the education was embarrassing and sometimes it was hard, but now that I look back on it I can see that she was trying to make sure we knew the things we needed to know.”
So now, as she reflects on Te Kura o Te Paroa’s 125-year history and notches up others’ contributions to the school, Erin thinks about the principals who have gone before her and helped to build Te Kura o Te Paroa into the thriving school that is today.
People like Tama Herewini, who in 1993 introduced a total immersion unit, or Toby Westrupp who ensured the building of the school’s hall during his stint at the helm from 2002 to 2009.
Erin takes a moment to consider what she would like her legacy to be.
When she speaks, the answer is not a surprise – given the 125 years that have moulded into this moment.
“I think mine is going to be around education and the curriculum. More specifically the development of a local curriculum that represents the needs of whanau.”