New WHS principal takes the reins

WHS principal Oded Nathan, fresh from a Mihi whakatau at the school on Thursday

New Wakatipu High School principal Oded Nathan is all about preparing students for “their future, rather than our past” and is well aware of the changing global landscape they’re heading into.

However, after 13 years with the school, deputy principal for more than 11 of them, Californian-raised Oded is up for the challenge.

He was officially welcomed in a moving Mihi whakatau (Māori welcome) on Thursday (26 January) by school staff, the Ministry of Education, Wakatipu school principals and other members of the Queenstown community, including Māori families with longstanding links to the school.

“I’ve been here since 2010 but it was really special to have such a warm welcome to this new position,” says Oded.

Passionate about education, mathematics, sport and developing great citizens, Oded hails from a strong family education and teaching heritage and knew he wanted to teach from the age of 13. “I remember tutoring my classmates and team-mates at high school.”

After studying maths and gaining a teaching diploma at UCLA he worked with a programme bringing highly-qualified maths teachers into inner city Los Angeles schools where he taught mathematics bilingually in English and Spanish.

A Millennium New Year adventure in 1999 saw him fall in love with New Zealand, teaching at Cashmere High School in Christchurch until 2009, where he was quickly promoted to dean and deputy principal.

A move to Queenstown landed him at Wakatipu High School in 2010 where within a year he was dean and head of maths, and promoted to deputy principal soon after former principal Steve Hall arrived in 2012.

For the past three years Oded’s been associate principal at the school and heavily involved in its leadership decisions, as well as having an acting principal role for three months in 2019.

When he arrived it was a Year 7 – 13 school with a roll of just around 700 students. It’s now Year 9 – 13 on the new Frankton site with over 1300 students.

While technology has had a big impact on education and society, Oded says the majority of Wakatipu High students are very involved in extra and co-curricular activities. “Ultimately, you want young people to be happy, connected and developing into good citizens that can contribute positively to society,” he says.

“I think our kids have been really resilient and remarkable in this ever-changing world and we’ve achieved a good balance.”

“We want students to be able to pursue their passions and have as many options available to them as possible. High school is just one step in their journey and we need to prepare them as best we can for life beyond high school.”

 

An old statistic already shows the average number of careers in a lifetime will be eight and for our current generations that will probably be more, says Oded. “Some say that half the jobs that exist today won’t tomorrow and half the jobs that exist tomorrow don’t exist today.”

“It’s important that students not only acquire the necessary knowledge and skills like numeracy and literacy, but other competencies such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and self-management,” he says. Compassion and empathy are also very important.

While the principal often gets the kudos a lot for those achievements they’re the product of a team effort. “So moving forward if any things are done differently that won’t be just me, there’ll be a whole team approach behind that.”

He feels chuffed to have been part of that team approach to date which is now starting to produce wonderful fruit. Despite Covid and new building disruptions to learning, Wakatipu High School students achieved outstanding results in 2022, bucking national trends, he says.

Interim results showed that 78 percent of Year 13 students achieved University Entrance in 2022, and our hope is that as the final results come in that percentage will be 80 percent. “As a school, our UE results from 2022 will likely place us near the top of all co-educational schools in the country.”

“At NCEA Level 2 the school had a 94 percent pass rate, which is very high and we also had excellent pass and endorsement rates at Level 1, 2 and 3,” he says.

“One key metric for us is the percentage of Year 8 students in the basin that come to WHS to enter Year 9, and at this point, it looks like that will be 95 percent – the highest it’s been since at least 2011,” says Oded.

A major concern for the kids in his job transition is that Mr Nathan, a passionate basketballer and sportsman, will stay on as one of the school’s basketball coaches. He’s hoping he can, but “we’ll see”, he grins.

Oded’s wife, Laura, is also director of sport at the school and heavily involved in sport.