Teacher takes reins at Hira School

Nic Moynihan is settling into her new role as principal/tumuaki at Hira School and says she loves the job.

“I love it, I can’t believe how much I love it,” she says of the role.

After teaching at the school for five years, she was worried she may miss being in the classroom but says she has found a balance which involves leading kapa haka, going on duty and a small amount of teaching in all three of the rural school’s classrooms.

Nic, her husband Sean, and their two children moved to Hira from Renwick a little over five years ago for Sean’s work.

They moved in right across the road from the school, where the space allows them to have horses and enjoy rural living.

Nic enjoyed teaching but realised that she wanted to pursue leadership opportunities, which the school provided her.

“I think we’ve got some really special things about our school. Our small size means that everyone knows everyone. The children all know each other, all of the staff know all of tthe children really really well and that is something we really want to hold on to,” Nic says.

With a role of 63 students, she hopes to see its size grow a little.

“The tricky thing we’ve got, is the houses aren’t as affordable out here as they used to be, so that makes it really tricky for families to be out here.”

Nic wants to spend her first year leading the school allowing kids to simply experience a ‘normal’ year of school after years of disruption from Covid-19 and

then the floods last year, which caused extensive damage to the school grounds.

“The kids deserve to just have some normalcy, where they can go to school everyday and not have anything cancelled.

“For anyone who is Year zero, one or two, they’ve never had normal, this is the first year they’ve had that, so we owe it to them to give them that.”

Nic hopes to see the return of the popular Valley to View fundraiser this year and says she is focussing on forming strong connections with the community and its businesses.

“We do a lot in our community, we’re out there, we’re involved, we do trap checking, look at our rivers and do lots of planting so its really important that we keep all of that going.”

Nic’s youngest has just started intermediate which she says will be good for her independence, having had mum as her teacher for the past two years.

“If it was my son it would never have worked, he’s just a little bit too cheeky and there’s too much grey area for him between my ‘mum is my mum’ and ‘my mum is my teacher’.

“My daughter, right from her first day at school, she’s always had me for bits and bobs so she’s always seen me as a teacher, so it actually worked pretty well, but its really nice for her to now have that independance.

She says the people is what she loves most about Hira School.

Nic would love to see more Nelsonians coming to check out what makes the school special.