By Ethan Adams and Elsie Leggett | Posted: Tuesday April 4, 2017
On Tuesday the 4th of April, we were privileged to interview Lynda Sides-Garland. Here’s what we found out:
Lynda Sides-Garland had an interesting childhood. Mrs Sides-Garland grew up in Waimate on a small farm with her family. Her family was the 3rd in her generation to live there, she now lives in West Melton with her husband, Paul.
She attended a school of around 35 and knew everyone there. She said that it was fun when a pupil had a birthday, the whole school would come to their house.
As Lynda grew up, her family was convinced that the oldest child was the smartest, and Lynda was the 2nd youngest. Lynda never tested her abilities because of this, until after high school when she went to University. There she studied Nursing of Dental Care and then discovered she could have become a dentist because she had the brains.
Lynda has done a lot of work on her background and has found out that she is part Spanish, Russian, Irish, Scottish and 1% of her bloodline is Indian. The most fascinating thing about her history is that she and her husband are both royalty, because they are both related to William the Conqueror. That is quite coincidental, but also very cool as, after all, they are descendants of royalty.
Her husband was dyslexic but because of this he could set long term goals. When he was six his dream was to own a zoo and can you guess who founded Orana Park. Yep her husband. Some of her other personal heroes are an elderly couple who went to Bali and were shocked that the government didn’t care about troubled children. So they spent their money to buy a school for these children, moreover they also spent money on vaccinations that would protect them from an eye threatening disease.
Lynda works as a resource teacher at Casebrook Intermediate. This means that she helps the struggling and dyslexic children in the RTLB room and around the city at other schools. Her son also has dyslexia so she is quite used to it and this is what possibly made her want to become a resource teacher.
Today we had a lucky day. As interviewing Lynda was informative and inspirational. Thank you Lynda and all the best.
By Ethan Adams and Elsie Leggett