TERM 3, 2020
A school fit for purpose Kiwi entrepreneurs and founders of Green School New Zealand, Michael and Rachel Perrett, knew when they opened their daring new campus in Taranaki this year, there would be whispers about them being the ‘hippies on the farm’. But the couple are convinced their innovative take on education is what’s needed to set students up for a brighter, healthier and happier future. They chatted to Chelsea Channing.
I N N O VAT I O N AND CHANGE
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Rachel and Michael Perrett remember their son William as being a happy and confident child before he started school. But as a learner with ADHD and dyslexia, William’s experience in a mainstream classroom was filled with frustration. “We started to see that we were losing him and he simply wasn’t enjoying school,” Rachel recalls. “I had spent four years as a parent helper in the classroom at his school, and experienced lots of frustrations in that process. “There were some things that happened that would help, and then there would be huge backflips, and that might be changing from one teacher to another, or a teacher saying ‘oh, you’re working at the level two years younger than where you should be at’.”
