“I want to be something more”: EIT Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) student Eli Henare is on his way.

Eli Henare aims to help kids love school.

Eli Henare’s childhood was often unhappy and violent and he and his brothers and sisters were in CYFS care for six years, until he was 11.

It’s been a long journey to where he is now, aged 24 – healthy, happy and training to be a primary teacher at EIT, and he wants to help young people engage with education and choose better paths earlier than he did.

With problems at home and no role models to show him a better way, Eli left school when he was 15 and felt like his life was going nowhere.

“I wasn’t motivated and there was always something going on at home. Mum didn’t know how to deal with me. I tried to get back into school at 16, but they wouldn’t take me because my attendance had been so bad. I was gutted, and just went drinking with my friends during the day, it was real depressing.”

Stung by the rejection from his old high school he joined Turanga Ararau’s services academy, got fit and found some male role models, which led to a job at Gisborne’s YMCA, where he supervised young school dropouts in the Community Max programme. This forced him to be more responsible himself and led to three years’ teacher aide work at Ilminster Intermediate School.

Last year he added coaching to his work with Ilminster students, and he earned praise for the positive impact he was having on children.

“It was really nice to hear that, because I didn’t really get much praise growing up. I enjoyed it and I felt really motivated. I was ready to go for something bigger and thought being a teacher I
could be a role model, not just for my family, but for my community.

“I was disappointed that no-one in my immediate family had aspired to be something more. They had always gone for field work or signed up for a benefit or something like that. As I got older I was just sick of seeing it and wanted to be something more.”

He initially chose EIT’s Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) because it allowed him to stay close to his brothers and sisters, and he enjoyed the structure of two days a week in schools, two in class at EIT and one for study.

“I’m a lot more excited about the future than I used to be.”