SLANZA Award for the Promotion of Reading to Trina Yuretich, Ahipara School

Trina Yuretich, Teacher with Library Responsibility and Deputy Principal at Ahipara School, is an active and energetic teacher who is always seeking new ways to engage students with reading for pleasure, through the library, her classroom and the school community. She was the recipient of the SLANZA Award for the Promotion of Reading in 2013.
 

Amongst various reading activities, Trina has been promoting summer holiday reading for students and staff. Last year she organised a fabulous summer reading photo competition which had many wonderful entries, and here is Trina herself, reading for pleasure in the summer sunshine at 90 Mile Beach, Te Oneroa-a-Tohe...

There was a great article in the local paper, The Northland Age, about Trina getting the Award,  and also in the following week's editorial  by Peter Jackson, where she was lauded :

Petrina Yuretich is one of those teachers who, far from simply teaching their pupils, shares her passion with them. And her particular passion is reading.  A few weeks ago she won an award for that, but her real reward is still to come. She is planting seeds that will grow, making a huge contribution to enabling the children she teaches today to become intelligent, inquisitive adults. Reading is the key that arguably unlocks every other form of learning. It does so in a fashion that hasn't changed since the first book was printed, and will not change despite social media.

A teacher can give her pupils no greater gift than the knowledge that between the covers of a book lie not only knowledge but wonder, the opportunity to experience people, places and events that no lifetime of actual experience ever will. Books can transport the reader far beyond their own immediate world, in a fashion that social media never will, and a child who develops a love of books early is truly blessed.
Petrina Yuretich knows that; she wants to see children reading not simply as a means of gaining knowledge pertinent to their education, but for pleasure. That is a wonderful thing. In the vernacular, it is cool. Uber cool....

She is the sort of teacher who, despite the unions, bureaucrats and politicians, gives her profession a good name, and who children will remember fondly, and with gratitude, long after their school days have ended.
We've all had great teachers at some point in our academic careers, no doubt - the writer and his contemporaries benefited immensely from some stunningly good teachers at Kaitaia Primary, Intermediate and College all those years ago - and it is gratifying to know they are still being produced by a system in which many have lost faith. Long may they continue to introduce their charges to a world that only they and parents can unlock for them, so that they too might experience the lightness of being that books and education can offer...