Why would someone pivot to teaching?

From 2014 to 2024, the number of Kiwis under 25 qualifying as primary or secondary teachers dropped by over a quarter.

The pay is not great. Teachers are paid a base salary with their starting point on the scale ranging from 1 to 10 depending on their qualifications and experience. At Step 1, a teacher would currently earn a base salary of $61,239 a year.

Yet significant numbers of Kiwis are leaving other, often more lucrative, careers to become teachers.

The number of 2024 trainees aged 35 and over was 640, just 10 fewer than a decade ago.

One of those is Matt Tihi (Tuhoe). The 49-year-old is, when we speak, heading into the fourth term of his year at The Teachers' Institute.

Growing up in Kawerau, in the Eastern Bay of Plenty, as the son of two primary school teachers, Tihi had “pretty much categorically said I would never be a teacher”.

Instead, “I finished school on the Tuesday, got on the bus at 4.30 and joined the Army”.

After 16 years he left to scratch a different itch, obtaining an LLB(Hons).

Then in 2020, finding a law firm did not provide the satisfaction of public sector work, he pivoted again, this time becoming lead of an anti-money laundering team at DIA.

He had been in the role for four years when cuts reduced the number of Auckland managers from two to one; having spent some time seconded into more senior positions, and feeling he had started to outgrow the role, Tihi decided not to reapply.

That was, he says, “a very good cross-roads, a point to take stock of my life… Someone said, have you thought about giving teaching a go? And I thought about it and said, that is exactly what I want to do”.

The idea might first have taken seed when his dad died in 2022. A Facebook post announcing his death prompted “hundreds and hundreds” of comments from ex-students saying he was their favourite teacher.

“You remember the teachers you had, especially the good ones. I was thinking that if you get one kid who hates school, hates your subject and through your hard work and sensitivity and caring you can turn them around and make them enjoy school or at least your subject, that is your reward.”

Debbie Follas knows a thing or two about hating school. “Hated it with a vengeance,” she says, perched on her chair in the principal’s office at Tokoroa Central School. “Couldn’t wait to get out of there at 15.”

This was 40-odd years ago, when a young school leaver had more options, she says. Like many Tokoroa locals, she first worked at the nearby pulp and paper mill, Kinleith.

“Left there to have my children, worked at WINZ, worked as the office manager at Timberlands Motor Hotel, sold real estate, worked as a curtain consultant… every couple of years, I’d just get bored.”

After turning 30, with young children and experiencing something of a career crisis, Follas went to a careers advisor. “They gave you a bit of a quiz and it spat out the top 100 jobs you’d be most suited to.”

Primary teaching came in third, after nursing (“I can’t do the blood”) and social work (“I’d worked at WINZ… to be honest, it was a bit depressing”). One communications paper later, she was studying by correspondence at Christchurch College of Education.

Part of the appeal of teaching was how it would fit around her life, in a small town with limited career options, and as a mother of young kids.

She says now she was “probably a little bit naive around the holiday thing”. Anyone who thinks teachers spend all the school holidays lying on a beach has never lived with a teacher, or possibly even known one, she says drily: holidays are full of paperwork, planning and preparation that can’t happen during the six hours per day teachers are in the classroom.

Still, the hours do make teaching a good job for a parent, even if Follas recalls sitting by the side of the pool, doing planning while her kids swam, or what was known as “Sunday School” - Sundays spent planning in her classroom while her, and several of her colleagues’, children played outside.

Follas reckons studying later made her a better student; with kids and a mortgage, she “couldn’t afford to fail” - as well as a better teaching, helping her advance to the role of principal.

“You have that richer worldview,” she says. “You can talk to parents from all walks of life because you’ve had so many jobs. That has been so helpful in my role particularly as principal. Even being a curtain consultant’s helped every now and then when I’ve had to measure up new blinds!”

Brogan Samuels also feels his prior experience has helped him advance in teaching. His rise could almost be called meteoric. In his second year out of training, the 33-year-old is Year 13 Dean, overseeing more than 200 final-year students at Tangaroa College in Otara.

Before teaching, Samuels had had just one employer, Mercury Energy. What was supposed to be a short break before graduating ended up being 11 years, during which he moved up into senior leadership and management roles.

Samuels jokes he retrained due to fear of missing out: his two best friends from uni had become teachers.

The passion really kicked in at a session where potential future teachers met with a large group of principals.

Because he lives in south-east Auckland, says Samuels, who is Samoan, “schools I interviewed with were low socio-economic… I had no idea these were the challenges students faced. Post-Covid attendance rates were low, engagement was low, morale it was fair to say was probably low and they needed people that students could relate to. Looking around the interview there weren’t many.”

Samuels believes his track record as a successful Samoan, as well as his corporate background, helped his rapid ascent.

“100 percent, I’m better able to give commitment because of my experience,” he says. “Not to throw shade, but if you’re straight out of uni, overseeing the academic success of students might not be your number one priority."

Tihi, who has joint custody of his own two kids, also feels his past experience will be helpful in the school context. “I’m aware of things like taking the job too personally, driving yourself to an early grave,” he says. “(They say) you never know how you’re going to react in a gunfight until you’ve been in a gunfight - I have been in a gunfight.”

Like Samuels, he comes into the comparatively low-paying profession with some financial security, and perspective.

“Something I realised over the last few years is that what I need to make is much lower than I actually thought it was,” says Tihi. “What it comes down to is the thing I’m doing day in and day out providing me with satisfaction… I wanted to find something that was going to be my forever job and teaching, I’ve decided that's where I'm going to finish off my career.”

As for former serial job-changer Follas? Teaching has “been the only job I’ve never got bored in”, she says.