Cate Gully’s education career ended last week on the same road where it all began 42 years ago.
Leaving the deputy principal post at Broadgreen Intermediate School for greener pastures after 26 years in the senior leadership role and 37 years walking the grounds and cluing up its tamariki for high school.
Cate arrived at Broadgreen in 1989 after relieving positions at Waimea Intermediate School, Rai Valley Area School and Stoke School, following two years teaching in London's East End and teaching at Nayland Primary School two years prior to that.
“I found my place and my people, Broadgreen has become a family,” she reflects.
“Intermediate kids are unique, and it's a great place of change… and you can see the value of anything you might give, but you also get so much back.”
“Two of the best things that we can teach a child is how to manage themselves, and especially at this age and stage, we have to help people understand who they are.”
Cate is from a teaching whānau, “seven siblings, five who teach and five who married teachers”, and her own children have attended Broadgreen.
She ruled out the school’s top job because “we already had a principal in the house, and one's enough”, referring to her husband, Hugh Gully, a long-serving former principal of Nelson Intermediate School.
From chalkboards, hand painting large picture books to read to her tamariki, education overhauls, extra-curricular activities, and her literacy, reading, writing and physical education forte, Broadgreen Intermediate has taught Cate a life lesson.
But after bidding adieu to thousands of tamariki she got to know for two years, it’s her time to exit the gates for good as well, with her Broadgreen memories evergreen.
“It's an interesting feeling that I think I won't be turning up here because when I look out the windows, I see our lovely kids wandering past and the phenomenal teachers I will miss,” she says.
“I've always loved being here, I will tell the staff here often that it's a place where I feel that I'm at home.”
“Mr Gully's been retired now for 18 months and I tell people he's a very good role model for retirement… and I'm being shown how to role model that as I go forward as well.”
Broadgreen Intermediate will appoint her successor in due course.
