Popular teacher says goodbye2 min read

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Mrs Karan, a popular and much-loved teacher aher  students and her teaching colleagues alike.

Subhashini Karan has been a teacher at OPS for 30 years and is a well-known face in Onehunga. Her daughter, Sheetal, says that there isn’t a day that she walks down Onehunga Mall without a ‘hello Mrs Karan’,  or someone recognising her and recounting fond memories of being her student. “Parents also stop to tell her how much their children adore her. Over recent years, the parents that stop to greet her also have their own children who are, or have been her students at OPS,” she says.

Mrs Karan came to New Zealand from Fiji in 1989 with her husband and three daughters. She retrained at the Auckland College of Education, specialising in Primary Teaching for Overseas Trained Teachers. In 1993, she started teaching part-time at Onehunga Primary after being interviewed by the then principal, Lionel Mickell, and deputy principal, Mary Steele. During the many years she worked there, she went on to study further for the Graduate Diploma in Teaching English in Schools to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), the Bachelor of Education (Teaching) and  Te Ara Reo maori Level 4. For a while, she taught TESOL full-time but then returned to classroom teaching in 2018.

“Ever since I was six years-old, I remember wanting to be a teacher,” she said at her farewell assembly. “My teachers in Fiji were my greatest inspiration and I was determined to fulfil my goal. I am very grateful for the multitude of people that I have had the opportunity to meet on this wonderful journey. I have made lifelong friends and met extraordinary young people who have made every day interesting, fun and rewarding. I truly love being an educator and am honoured to have taught so many amazing children from different ethnicities and diverse backgrounds.

“My hope for the future is that OPS continues to be a place where children know that they are valued for who they are and are loved and cared for.”