Stranded students are 'family'

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Shelley McCallum with her Chinese homestay students, Helen Zhao (left) and Cathy Zhao (not related), and son Ben. Picture / Paul Estcourt

The collapse of the Modern Age language school is a double whammy for Remuera solo mother Shelley McCallum.

Not only has her $39,000-a-year teaching job at the school's Newmarket campus evaporated with $3000 owed to her, she also hosts two of its students.

But their prepaid board of $200 each a week vanished with the school. The Government has promised to cover board for August, but there are no guarantees after that.

Mrs McCallum, 53, who supports son Ben, 15, says she lives week-to-week as it is.

Staff were told they were jobless by fax on Friday. Mrs McCallum had to break the news to her astonished and worried Chinese students, Cathy Zhao, 25, and the unrelated Helen Zhao, 23.

But she will not evict her students, as six families have done.

"They've got nowhere to go. Sure, their board money helped the household finances, but "they're like my family - I treat them like I would expect my kids to be treated if they were overseas".

Now she takes things a day at a time - the household has decided to "muddle through". Helen, supported by her parents, has just given Mrs McCallum two weeks' board, effectively paying twice.

But Cathy, four months into an 11-month stay, has nothing spare. She handed over $9600 for board and $16,320 for tuition in advance - a requirement of foreign student visas. It was money hard-earned over 18 months working as a Chinese-Japanese translator.

Cathy Zhao is "too embarrassed" to tell her parents, and worries that her money will not last.

Yesterday, a grim-faced Mrs McCallum and most of her 20 colleagues from the Newmarket campus watched silently as 160 of the school's Auckland students, most of them Asian, were redistributed among nine other schools.

The students' faces reflected bewilderment and sorrow rather than anger. As they gathered into groups to be escorted away, some dissolved into tears.

Several teachers, strung out by weeks of uncertainty, also buried their faces in handkerchiefs.

"I wish they had taken the students with the teachers," said red-eyed Rachel den Hartigh.

Colleague Ingrid Devilliers also felt the pain of shattered bonds.

"They are so dependent on us - we are all they have. We're more like their mums than their teachers.

"They come to us with all their problems - they like to trust us. When something like this happens the trust goes out the window.

"I just hope they get what they need at other schools."

Said teacher Keith Dawson: "It feels like a member of the family's died."

Mrs McCallum will go to Work and Income today to apply for support. The language schools downturn equals a glut of quality teachers fighting for jobs.

She is only half-joking when she murmurs: "We need counselling for trauma."