By Emanuelle Davis-Eldridge and Nicholas Harnett | Posted: Tuesday April 4, 2017
Mrs Dick-McCann, our school Food Technology teacher was born and raised in Napier, Hawkes Bay.
She went to primary, intermediate and high school in Napier and then went to Teacher’s College in Palmerston North to get a Primary Teacher Bachelor’s degree. She then went to Loretta Hall’s teaching college to finish learning. Mrs Dick-McCann started to teach at many primary schools and even taught in London, and after three years she traveled back to New Zealand, and stayed in Christchurch.
After teaching primary for a long time, she decided to teach something she loved, and that was cooking and sewing. She did this at intermediate schools and enjoyed it very much.
Currently, Mrs Dick-McCann teaches cooking here at Casebrook.
With the year 8s, she teachers nutrition and how to take care of your health. She usually does this through teaching healthy recipes. For the year 7s, she does Garden to Table (Fun fact: Casebrook is the only school in Christchurch that does Garden to Table!) which is when she teaches students how use food grown in the school garden to cook with. She also teaches recipes, which she likes to mix up between groups. She says the thing she loves the most about her job is to see students challenging themselves, “I think it’s good to see students learn more about themselves through learning” she said.
Apart from teaching, Mrs Dick-McCann loves learning how to quilt, because she likes how you can put many patterns together. She also loves to garden.
People Mrs Dick-McCann looks up to are Nelson Mandela and her father. She says that she looks up to her father because he always taught her to work hard and help other people. She looks up to Nelson because he “inspired so many people”. A big goal she achieved was traveling around the world, and she hopes that many people travel overseas as well.
By Emanuelle Davis-Eldridge (with assistance from Nicholas Harnett)