Sheila Hunter has been a teacher aide at Richmond School for a quarter of a century and her connections started as a five-year-old student, with her children and grandchildren following her footsteps through the school.
It doesn’t stop there; her husband-to-be Jimmy was in the same year as Sheila through her primary school days, though she didn’t connect with him until her 20s.
Alongside her, Grant Irvine has taught at the school for that quarter-century milestone and for most of the time his trusty puppet, Johnny, has entertained his students with a touch of mischief that only an alter ego can do. In all, the school has 12 staff who have been there for more than 20 years and other schools in the area also have long-standing employees. So maybe it’s something in the water, the air, or perhaps the kids that keep them here.
Sheila says it’s the kids – and the staff. As a teacher aide, she has often dealt with children who have complex needs and she says it is hugely rewarding to form a bond with them and watch them progress.
“One boy, when I first started with him, wouldn’t talk to me at all. But I was at the pool one day and he came up and gave me this beautiful big cuddle, all soaking wet.”
She has had to learn how to monitor diabetes and use feeding tubes, and while both she and Grant have been at the school the roll has grown from about 300 to more than 500 students. By the time Grant began teaching at Richmond Primary, his puppet Johnny already had years of experience at schools and eventually completed 40 years in the classroom until Grant retired him.
“Coincidentally, Johnny got Parkinsons at the same time I did. The grandkids get to see him now. He was largely for fun. He could say things I couldn’t say, and I’d tell him off and say he couldn’t speak like that. Then he would say, ‘well, I just did’. He became my alter ego. Sometimes he’d say things and I’d think, where the hang did that come from?”
Grant is now teaching children whose parents he taught in the early 2000s. Back then he taught two of his own three sons who all went through the school and that was special.
“People say they can’t teach their own kids, but I enjoyed it and I think they did too. You can have a bit of fun with them and you’re there at their sports days and they don’t have any excuse about their homework!”
He especially enjoys watching the kids grow in confidence from the time they start school to the time they leave for intermediate.
“It’s quite amazing to hear some of them saying they used to hide under the desk when they started and ‘now look at me’. You see change every year and massive change by the time they leave.”
Sheila says their principal, Tim Brenton, has a saying that sums it all up for her long stay: ‘it’s the best party in town’.
