Alana Thompson decided she was going to be a teacher on her very first day of school, in 1993.
“When I turned five, I had the most amazing teacher, Mrs Kitty Higgins,” she said. “She always wore pearls and floral dresses, and I adored her, and I wanted to grow up and be just like her.”
Karāpiro School’s new principal, Alana Thompson, is passionate about the school being “the hub of the community”. Photo: Holly Fulforth.
Today, having taken over as Karāpiro School’s new principal,, Thompson is living the dream – minus the pearls and floral prints.
“I am fond of a plain and practical pair of black pants with a great pair of heels,” she said. “Us little guys need all the help we can get!”
Becoming a principal has long been one of her ambitions but she is delighted the job involves a minimum of two days’ teaching a week.
“Being hands-on, every day, with the kids, is still why I get up at six o’ clock in the morning, you know, why I wake up at two o’ clock in the morning thinking about what we could do differently and how we could change that,” she said.
She believes it is a teacher’s job to “help children find their potential and show them they’re capable of reaching it”.
“Through my whole life, it became really apparent the impact that teachers can have on children in that really formative part of their lives, where their brains are developing and they’re becoming the people they’ll be for the rest of their lives, so being a part of that journey is a real honour and a real privilege,” she said.
“It’s always going to be the thing that motivates me to grow and be better and do more, is to try and have that lifelong impact on kids and create kids that take over the world, you know, the citizens that we want leading our world in the next generation.”
Thompson has lived in Cambridge all her life. She attended Kaipaki, Cambridge Middle and Cambridge High schools before completing a Bachelor of Education degree at the University of Waikato.
After graduating she taught at Leamington School for 12 years, where principal Mike Malcolm said she “quickly became a highly respected teacher”.
“Alana is a fabulous person, a stunning teacher, and a builder of communities,” he said.
Thompson moved to Kaipaki School three years ago and was promoted to deputy principal in 2023.
The Karāpiro School opportunity arose at the beginning of term two this year, when principal Tina-Maree Thatcher left to pursue a career in law.
“We’ve got a whole new staff this year, which is incredibly rare in education, so we have lots of very animated, excited staff meetings talking about the possibilities and the potential and where we want to go,” Thompson said.
“I’m really passionate about the school being the hub of the community – ag days, working bees and sports days become social events for our community.”
Last week she headed to Fiordland, where she will work with the Sir Peter Blake Trust and the University of Otago on a week-long environmental research project.
Six teachers were selected for the professional development opportunity.
Thompson lives in Cambridge with her husband Shaun, an aircraft engineer, their children Caitlyn, 9, and Jake, 7, their sausage dog Louie and their “mixed breed fluffy thing” Oscar.
She loves baking, decorating cakes and “just being out in nature”.
Her vision for Karāpiro School is “to continue the amazing things that are already happening here, to grow the roll and to help the community see just how cool this little school is”.
