Making a Difference One Day at a Time
Three new instructors joined our Mangatāwhiri Team at the start of the term, so we headed out to our Outdoor Campus recently to meet them.
It was a pretty bleak winter’s morning, so let’s chat over a nice cuppa, or even over lunch, we thought!
We should have known better with our crew at Mangatāwhiri! First, we had to get them down from the very top of the climbing wall! They were practising rope work and rescue procedures ahead of a busy schedule over the next few weeks.
But after a bit, we were sitting around the lunch table with the full complement of the team of outdoor instructors.
All three new instructors - Charis Allison, Zoe Brawn and Lucy Eyre-Walker - are women working at a boys’ school. In fact, there are 12 outdoor instructors at Mangatāwhiri, half of whom are female now. We asked them all about it!
“Yes, there’s a high concentration of female outdoor instructors in the team”, says Zoe. “To me it’s important for young men in all-boys schools to see females in a professional capacity, outdoors - modelling and demonstrating value, skill and understanding”.
It was great to get to know them and hear more about the work they do, helping our young men build their confidence in the outdoors.
Meet Our New Team Members
Zoe Brawn
An experienced instructor, Zoe came to Dilworth from Hillary Outdoors and has also worked in sea kayaking and marine education.
Zoe says outdoor education played a pivotal role in her own life when she got the chance to go on Outward Bound as a teenager:
“Outdoor education played a key role in my life as a teenager. It gave me a sense of self-confidence, a sense of community and insight into what I was capable of.”
And she has seen firsthand how new capabilities can translate into other areas of life “I want to give students the same opportunities I had. If I can instil a sense of confidence, they can carry it into other areas of their lives.”
Lucy Eyre-Walker
Lucy is originally from Christchurch and graduated last year with a Diploma in Outdoor & Adventure Education from Hillary Outdoors.
Like Zoe, she says she absolutely loves ‘being able to make a difference one student at a time’ at Dilworth, and she makes a good point about how the outdoors can challenge you in ways a classroom never could.
When you add in all the elements, she says, “Seeing the sense of accomplishment our young men feel when they overcome whatever is holding them back is simply amazing”.
Charis Allison
Caris was involved in a different activity than Zoe and Lucy that morning, so she had a bit more time with her to learn more.
Becoming a Dilworth Outdoor Instructor, she said, was the moment when her years of training really came together. She first studied theology and then, at the end of last year, completed a Bachelor’s in Sustainability and Outdoor Education. After a summer of mountain biking and rock climbing in Queenstown, she landed her first post-grad job at Dilworth in Term 2.
“It’s one thing to spend three years studying systems and practising abseil rigs in mock assessments,” Charis comments. “It’s another to stand in front of a group of students and realise: I actually do know what I’m talking about.”
And she certainly does know. But teaching teenage boys in the wilderness presents challenges that textbooks rarely cover, and she has quickly learned the art of working with diverse students and personalities. There are those, she says, who absolutely love the outdoors and everything about it; the ‘eager outdoorsmen’. Then others are the opposite and appear to be completely resistant at the start, but who make progress, and those who are what she terms ‘stuck in the middle’ – students who want to participate but face a specific block, like a fear of heights.
She says she gets something out of working with them all, but has especially found her passion in encouraging students who are a bit stuck.
“I love working with those middle-ground students,” she explains. “They already have their own buy-in, but they just need help overcoming the barrier.” She says seeing students build their own confidence is very satisfying. During a recent abseiling trip, she said, one student made it his personal goal for the term to overcome his fear of heights. Charis said assessing his readiness and seeing him hook into the lines and execute his descent flawlessly was so rewarding.
For students who resist the experience entirely, her strategy involves separating peer groups to reduce collective posturing, giving individuals room to succeed on their own terms.
Charis’s background in studying native ecology has also added a new dimension to the outdoors for many students, as she shares her enthusiasm with them. Persuading a group of Year 10s to share that enthusiasm requires a tactical approach, she says.
“Some of them don’t care at first. They’re like, ‘Miss, it’s just another tree—stop talking about the mushrooms!’” she laughs. “But then a few look closer and go, ‘Wait, that’s so cool.’ Sharing that delight is the best part.”
In the evening, outdoor learning gives way to games around the campfire. According to Caris, students’ favourite this term is Mafia, a bluffing and deduction game - a modern-day Cluedo.
Living on-site at Mangatāwhiiri, sharing with her flatmate and colleague, Lucy, Charis says she feels truly grounded in her new role. While she remains open to wherever her career and faith lead, the impact of her current work is already unmistakable: helping young men build their confidence, trust the system and develop themselves.
All three new instructors share a clear love of the outdoors and of our native ecology. Equally, their passion is to see how it can help our young men grow in all areas of their lives.
Outdoor Activity in Term Three
At the time we met with them, all three instructors were preparing for the Year 9 programme, one of the most intensive programmes of the Mangatāwhiri year, in which 45 students go out for 12 days at a time.
The Year 11 programme also rolls through Term Three, with that cohort heading down to Waitomo for caving.
An important new feature of this term was an overnight experience for new Year 9 students, designed to introduce them to outdoor experiences and lay the foundations for the upcoming programme. Deputy Head of Campus Rob Jolly said this went down really well with students and gave them valuable experience, commenting, “I enjoy seeing how our boys look for opportunities to be Tuakana Teina – using their skills to make the journey easier for each other – seeing it is so rewarding”.