I chose a career in education because of curiosity. As a child I was fortunate to grow up in an extended family where curiosity was highly valued and information freely shared. I lived with Mum and my brother in my grandparent’s home. Every day I saw adults and teenagers reading. 

My grandmother was a real bookworm who had her face in a book as often as she could get away with. My grandfather read the newspaper every day and both of them always did the crosswords. My uncle and aunt were teenagers and I saw them move from school to vocation - my aunt, like my mother, to nursing, and my uncle to university and on to teaching. So, learning was the constant backdrop to family life. 

In school I was always puzzled about why so many others found learning hard, especially maths. To me it was perfectly straightforward. In my senior high school years I realised that it wasn’t the maths that was difficult, it was the teaching. In fact, for most of my 6th form year (year 12) I taught myself maths because I couldn’t see the reasoning behind what my teacher was presenting as learning. 

I’d read through the examples in the textbook, find the answers in the back and then back map my way from the solution to the question and figure out the process in between. I worked out my own algorithms for finding solutions and I’d practice them until I could get the right answers, because at school the right answers were all that mattered. 

As and adult, and particularly as a teacher, I saw mathematics in a whole new light. My personal experience of maths had been buffered by my own curiosity and determination to solve problems so I developed a knack of seeing beyond the right answers, to possible pathways to solutions. I realised then that maths is not about the numbers. Maths is about thinking. 

In my opinion, maths is a key component of the curriculum because it develops thinking - it’s not about doing maths, it’s about thinking mathematically. I used to have a little poster I’d made for my classroom that said “Mathematics is about thinking” and I would often put it up on a wall when I was running a pāngarau (maths) workshop with kaiako. 

A few weeks ago I finally watched the movie A Theory of Everything about the life of Prof. Stephen Hawking. There’s a scene where he’s suddenly struck upon an idea about black holes, a curious wondering, and is scribbling his workings on a blackboard, clearly getting fired up about where it’s going. 

I got butterflies in my stomach watching it. I was fully geeking out. I was watching him totally absorbed in the creative problem solving process, immersed in the flow of ideas and possible pathways to solutions, trying to untangle conflicting notions to reveal a fresh approach. All I could think as I watched was,”Wow, I love this shit!” The excitement was real, folks, I was totally drawn in.

Those are the footsteps I want to walk in. Not the deep and complicated calculus stuff so much, but the intense curiosity that drives you to seek answers and create solutions. Yes, I’m the kind of person who will spend a couple of hours untangling a ball of twine just so I can have an untangled ball of twine. I will not be beaten by string! 

I’m always wondering why, which is what drew me into the field of coaching. I read a lot, a wide range of literature and, with my mathematical tendency, I’m drawn to the patterns and connections between information in one field and questions in another. This seeded a belief in me that there’s a solution to every problem, we just haven’t found it yet. 

My area of expertise isn’t astrophysics, or quantum theory, as fascinating as they are. It’s not even neuroscience, psychology or economics, despite the fact that these all feature high on my reading list. My expertise is finding out how all of these areas can inform what we do as kaiako and educators. 

As I’ve delved into the world of entrepreneurship, trying to build my own coaching business, I’ve unearthed processes and techniques that could transform systems in a classroom. At the conjunction of neuroscience and psychology I found clues about assessment, motivation and behaviour that could refashion the way that we present learning. The fields of sociology and economics can suggest ways of shifting our concept of success and open up a whole other world of engagement for ākonga of diverse learning propensities. 

And that, my friends, loops me back to my opening sentence - I chose a career in education because of curiosity.