Tommy Wilson: Good teachers are taonga

Welcome Bay School's haka for former student Peter Burling and Team NZ. Photo/file

We all had them and we all needed them if we were going to get anywhere in the life that lay ahead of us post-schoolyard days. Coaches and teachers with empathy, understanding and tautoko who are the backbone of our tamariki becoming success stories in life, and we have heard a few of them being told this last week at Welcome Bay School where Peter Burling went to school.

If we were to rewind the tape of teachers in our life, most of us could remember the ones who influenced our free-range thinking, and sing their praises.

To Sir with Love for me was a thank-you song I would sing to myself, when good things happened in my life directly attributable to the tautoko (encouragement) I received from a teacher, back in the day at Omanu School and then Mount Maunganui College.

The Lulu classic says it all about thanking someone who has taken you from crayon to perfume or, in my case, from scribble to scribe, and how can we go back and thank them for it today as the tamariki of Welcome Bay have done?

For us ageing, hairless hippies, we mostly can't. But we can mirror their message to our own children and mokopuna.

Some chose to teach us a lesson by inflicting pain with a cane while others chose another weapon that Sir Apirana Ngata professed would win the challenges Maori would face in the future. Sir Apirana called this weapon the Taiaha of Knowledge.

Teachers who taught us with the taiaha of knowledge and the patience of an understanding parent were taonga or treasures in our lives, especially for those who did not have one to go home to after school.

For me it was Jean Wills and Harry Paniora at Omanu Primary School and then John Crossman and Fanny McBride at Mount College, with a bit of Bill Smith thrown in as a teacher who told us "townies" to use our hands and our heads to get ahead in life - and watch out if you came to school with anything that even looked like hippy hair.

It was an instant "kina cut" and a walk of shame standing on a chair in the middle of the playground.

The same can be said of our leaders and the teachers who may have had a positive or negative influence in their lives.

Meeting one of Winston's teachers, if there are any still alive, would be tres cool. I bet they used a lot of Ipana and Brylcreem and could charm the pants off a python.

As would his new "untouchable" sidekick Shane Jones. Shane is taking the Elliot Ness approach to drug dealers up North and turning up the heat on their ill-gotten gains.

However, history teaches us from prohibition days that stamping on the toes and pockets of the dealers only shifts the problem from one wholesaler to another.

Still, Shane is not as ruthless and cutthroat as Hone Harawira, who wants to execute them all. I wonder who influenced Hone as a teacher growing up in a Far North school?

SBW, who was an SOS for the Lions, had pockets of positive teaching whakapapa (history) coming through but, sadly for him on Saturday - and all the kids who look up to him - his mana, his mojo and his arms in a tackle were missing.

When I see the colours of our councillors and elected leaders coming through I apply the leadership litmus test and ask myself, who were their teachers who made them shine?

Locally we have a shining example of future-focused councillors who want the Bay with Plenty to offer our visitors a centre of excellent opportunity, to showcase and share our stories with.

There is no question tourism is the silver lining in our long white cloud - especially for Maori - and with the opening of this whare manaaki (visitor centre), we can all sing the All Black chant "Tūtira mai [Stand together], Tātou tātou e [All of us, all of us]" - as we welcome the manuhiri (visitors) to the safe anchorage of Tauranga Moana.

It has been a week of celebrating lo-cool heroes who were brought up on good values by great parents and tumeke teachers.

Perhaps we should do as Lulu sang and write across the sky in letters a thousand feet high, a big thank you to our teachers who taught us to be the Peter Burlings of this world.

Teachers and coaches who taught us to pick up the taiaha of knowledge and learn life's lessons by recognising one's gifts and going for it. Starting on a little waka called Jelly Tip and now the fastest doubled-coned foiled-filled trumpet on the planet.

For all of us, the message the Auld Mug will be bringing home is the same as Sir Apirana Ngata: If you want to grow free-range kids, feed them backyard, homegrown heroes.