From teaching to careers with Liz

In this episode I chat with Liz, a seasoned educator whose career has taken her from the PE department and language classroom to the skies as a flight attendant and finally into her current role as a careers advisor. Liz shares her journey of transformation with honesty and warmth, reflecting on what led her to teaching, the joys of extracurricular involvement, and the decision to step away after two decades in the same school. 

She talks about her time working in an open-plan school in Queenstown, the process of retraining as a careers advisor through NMIT, and how she completed her diploma while working as a domestic flight attendant. Liz also offers practical insights into how she supports students in planning their future careers, the importance of soft skills in an ever-changing job market, and why having a ‘Plan B’ is crucial, especially for students aiming for competitive fields like medicine. 

Whether you’re an educator considering a change, a career advisor, or someone passionate about guiding young people, Liz’s story is a powerful reminder that reinvention is always possible and that every step of the journey can shape the impact we have on others. 

Hosted by Debbie Ross
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For more information, guest recommendations, and sponsorship opportunities 
or to chat, please email: nurturingeducators@gmail.com or visit  www.nurturingeducators.co.nz

Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

Debbie:  Today I’m catching up with someone I had the pleasure of working alongside for many years — the amazing Liz! From teaching PE and languages to deaning, flight attendant and now guiding students as a career advisor — Liz has worn many hats in education and embraced every chapter with purpose. We’ll chat about her journey, the shifts she’s made, and the wisdom she’s picked up along the way. 

Debbie: Welcome, Liz. 

Liz: Hi. How are you going? 

Debbie: Pretty well, thanks. 

Liz: Good. 

Debbie: So just to start, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Liz: Sure. I'm a 62-year-old teacher and I've been living in New Zealand most of my life. I did spend some time overseas, married a Frenchman, got a French passport, but came back to New Zealand after about six or so years over there. And I've been a PE teacher most of my life. I have two children. And, yeah, I love lots of things in the outdoors. 

Debbie: Awesome. And so how did you get into teaching? 

Liz: Well, I start from a young age. I wanted to be a PE teacher. So I think that was sort of a goal of mine from the time when I was about 14. And so I went to PE school in Otago and then did the one-year teaching diploma here in Auckland and then became a PE teacher from there. 

Debbie: There you go. How was uni in Otago? 

Liz: It was great fun. Yeah, I had a fantastic time down there. A lot of what they say in the media is true, but a lot of what they say is not true as well. So, yeah, it's a great privilege to be able to go away from home and live in a hall of residence and meet other people from all over the country. It's getting more expensive for students to do that these days. Yeah. Great opportunity if you can. 

Debbie: So what drew you to PE teaching and languages? 

Liz: Well, I guess the PE teaching was because I, as I say, I've always loved it and I thought watching my PE teachers at school that they had the best lifestyle. I didn’t realise that anyone didn’t like PE, so I just thought that every student loved it like I did. So I thought, what a perfect life. And languages came later because I learnt French when I was overseas and at some point in my career, I was offered the chance to teach a Year 9 French class and discovered that I actually loved teaching languages. 

Debbie: That's great. I also remember us sharing doing a bit of a language exchange, too, didn't we, back in the day? 

Liz: Yeah, we used to help each other with Spanish and French. Yeah. 

Debbie: That was amazing, too. Such a great opportunity to improve our other languages. 

Liz: Yeah, for sure. 

Debbie: So what's a favourite memory from teaching? 

Liz: Oh, there’s a lot. I think, you know, I think the interaction with students in terms of going on camps, extracurricular activities is something that stands out to me. Because you get to know the students on a different level and you build good relationships with students by doing that kind of thing. So I think that’s one of them. I had a long time in one school and built good relationships with a lot of staff and made a lot of friends that are still my friends today. So that’s another really great part about teaching. You’re working with like-minded people. 

Debbie: Yeah, that’s great. So with PE teaching, what’s some of the opportunities that PE teachers get to do in terms of the extracurricular? 

Liz: Oh, well, they can do pretty much anything. It’s more about whether they want to give up their free time to do it. 

Debbie: Oh, okay. 

Liz: So PE teachers, any teacher really, can join into extracurricular activities. I think one of the things I loved doing was the ski team, because I’m a keen skier, so that was a, you know, that would never felt like work to me being able to go on the ski trip. Excuse me. So there’s endless opportunities. It depends on what you put yourself forward for in terms of extracurricular, whether you’re a PE teacher or any teacher. 

Debbie: And with languages, did you get to do any trips? 

Liz: I did, yes, that was great. I got some trips to New Caledonia. 

Debbie: Oh, cool. 

Liz: And that’s, again, you do that in your holidays, so you do give up your time. But the things you gain from it, I think, outweigh the time you give up. It depends on the trip you go and where you go. It is a big responsibility to take students away overseas. But it’s a great experience for them and you get to have a bit of holiday as well in a nice environment and you’re practising your language too. 

Debbie: Yeah, true. Yeah, that’s really good. So you did one of your schools was down in Queenstown. What prompted you to move down there? 

Liz: Oh, living in Queenstown was what prompted me. I’ve always wanted to live down there. I love mountains. I love the biking, the walking, just everything about Central Otago is amazing. So that was the main motivator for going down there and a job came up that I could apply for. And luckily I got it. 

Debbie: Right, yeah. How many years were you down there for? 

Liz: I was only there one year. So the job was part-time and I couldn’t really afford to stay part-time in the end. So I came back after a year, but it was an amazing year, and I wish it had been longer. So a great experience if you get to have the opportunity to do something like that. 

Debbie: So the school down there was open-plan classroom teaching. How did you find that? 

Liz: Well, I was lucky in that I was careers advising at that point. I wasn’t teaching PE anymore. So as a careers advisor, you tend to deal with students one-on-one. So the open-plan environment didn’t affect me in that respect. I had one Spanish class and luckily for me, I got an actual classroom, so it was not all open plan. And so again, the open plan didn’t affect me, but I did see , I witnessed lots of classes. In the mornings, if I'd go to get students for an appointment, sometimes they'd be not where I thought they'd be, because in the mornings, in the form time, they would tend to move around a bit a bit much. I saw some really good teaching in the open environment in the science area. So they'd have a whiteboard set up with some little moveable chairs that'd drag up to the whiteboard and then behind that they'd have desks. So the teacher would call the students away from the desks to come and sit on these little like squab things. And it meant that they were really, really close to the whiteboard and the teacher would have their full attention because they were all sitting up, sort of basically right beside her. And then after 10 minutes of talking, she'd send them away and he would send them away and they'd go back to the desks and do some work. So I thought it worked really effectively in that environment because they could get the kids full attention for those 10 minutes by bringing them in really close. However, there were some downsides to that too. So one time I was relieving a class and a teacher from another class came over to where I was and told these two kids that I thought I was teaching to stop talking. Stop talking to each other. And then she said to me, oh, that one's in your class and this one's in my class. So they were they were sitting side by side in two separate classes just having a chat. And I, because it was a leaving, didn't know that they were not both in my class. 

Debbie: Sure. 

Liz: So there can be distractions from other classes, from, if a teacher next to you is loud or if there's a video playing or, you know, there can be all sorts of distractions for students. So I don't think it works so well for the students who are not the greatest at focussing. Yeah. Easily distracted. Yeah. 

Debbie: So you just mentioned before about transitioning over to become a career counsellor. What was the process that you had to go through to become a counsellor? 

Liz: So in the past, people used to just sort of move into that role if there was a job, vacancy in a school, quite often with no qualifications. But now more and more, teachers are doing a diploma in careers advising. There are several around and so nowadays more and more we're expecting careers advisors to be qualified. So I well, actually took a year off teaching and while I was doing that, I did this career's diploma because I had quite a bit of downtime. So I managed to get it done quite fast. 

Debbie: through what company? 

Liz: NMIT, Nelson, Marlborough, Polytech.  So they are the main people who provide that at the moment. There used to be one through AUT. I think that may start up again, but at the moment it's through NMIT. And so I could do it all online. 

Debbie: Distance, yeah. 

Liz: Yeah, well, it was distance for me. I think since I did it, they've changed the course slightly and now you do have to have some time down in Nelson. Not much like Block courses but it's become a little bit more intense. So I was lucky I did it just prior to that. It was a lot of essay writing and understanding the theory of career advising and that kind of thing. So I did that and then the following year I applied for a job as a career advisor in a school. 

Debbie: Are there a lot of jobs like that out there? 

Liz: Around October time, they are some jobs. It depends from year to year. 

Debbie: Do people tend to stick to their jobs for as long as they can? 

Liz: gosh, it depends on the area. I think there is a bit of movement. It's not like there's no jobs. Certainly easier than finding a job, say, as a Spanish teacher or a French teacher. So there is a bit of movement. And sometimes schools increase the numbers of their careers ad or the number of careers advisors they have. So it's not that difficult.. 

Debbie: You're the only one at your school? 

Liz: No, there are four of us. Well, there are three of us plus a gateway coordinator. But three of us, we all teach two classes. Whereas in the first school I worked in, there were only two of us, but neither of us toured any classes, but we had a lot of students to look after. So that was a huge school. A lot of schools are understaffed for careers advisors. 

Debbie: Well, I didn't realise how big it was. 

Liz: The school I'm in now, needing three or four of us. Yeah, but that's, as I say,  we're all teaching two classes, so it's really like two and a half. Okay. full- timers. But it's a big school, you know, two and a half thousand students, so, yeah. 

Debbie:  And you were flight attendant for a while?  Tell us a little bit more about that. 

Liz: Yes, I had a year where I just was a bit burnt out and thought I can't keep doing the same thing. I'd been in the same school for 20 years and I had lots of different roles. I was a dean, I was a language teacher and I was a p teacher. But I got to the point where I just thought I can't do another year of this. And a friend who was flight attending said, why don't you apply for this? And I did and they were looking for people at the time and, you know, got the job pretty easily. So I think speaking languages helped and being more mature actually helped because they don't always want just young people who haven't got much life experience. So it was fun. I loved the hours I was working domestic flights, so I was never flying late at night and I really enjoyed the schedule because you'd work, say, maybe six days in a row, but then have four days off and you every month you'd have a long weekend at least. So the hours were great, but the pay was terrible and the job itself was a bit repetitive. So I couldn't see myself doing it long, long term. So that's when I started doing this career's diploma. while I was flying. I had a lot of downtime in hotels where you'd be, you'd arrive the night before, and then you wouldn't be flying till 2 o'clock the next day, so you'd have all morning. So I'd sit and write my essays and that's why I got it done fast. But I mean, flight attending was fun. I don't regret doing it, but I couldn't have afforded to keep doing it.  Just financially with my mortgage. It was going to be too much. 

Debbie: Great experience, though, eh?  Yeah, I mean, you meet some cool people and travel to some fun places. 

Liz: Yeah, I got to see lots of New Zealand and it was a lot of people laughed when I said I'd been a flight attendant for a year because I was 55 when I became a flight attendant. So, you know, it's but it's possible. And it was fun. And I think maybe if it'd been flying internationally, I don't know, I would have enjoyed the destinations more, but I would have found the hours really gruelling, I think. Yeah, those overnight ones. People who sleep well anywhere are probably fine, but I'm not one of those people. 

Debbie: And the jet lag, I guess as well, I would have been quite a lot for some people. 

Liz: Yeah, I think so. I mean, they do get good breaks between, but... Yeah, it's not for everybody that lifestyle. But it it was good fun, and I'm glad I did it. 

Debbie: How long is the course to become a flight attendant? 

Liz: Oh, Three weeks. Three weeks intense, though. Yeah, intense. They fly you to Nelson. I was with there Nelson, so you fly down to Nelson and you live there for three weeks and you do Monday to Friday and you do some stuff at night and then you set some tests and then at the end of the three weeks, you're done. And then you start flying. But the first couple of first week or so, I can't remember you fly with someone else with another flight attendant and then you're on your own. 

Debbie: So you've got a whole plane to yourself? 

Liz: Yeah, well, I was, yeah, one flight attendant to 50 passengers. So that was sole charge, which means there was no one else to laugh with or chat with. But the flights were really short. You know, some of them are 20 minutes. So you do five or six flights in a day. which was quite repetitive, but but, you know, it was fun. 

Debbie: Do you have to pay for the program or is that all part included to do the three weeks training? 

Liz: No, no. Once they've employed, you're being paid by them for that. Oh, okay. So once you've got the job, then they train you. So, most people have to go to a couple of interviews. So I didn't. I just did the group interview. So they basically get all the people applying in a room full of other flight attendants and also full of people employees from New Zealand. They just watch how you interact with people. Ah. Yeah. And, yeah, that was it. I got the job from that. I think I maybe had, that's not true. Me and one other girl together had a couple of questions in a room. But yeah, it was pretty easy. Whereas I think it depends on whether they're looking to hire or not. And that's the thing about the aviation industry. They's very up high. Yeah. 

Debbie: Fascinating. It's good to know for those who might want to explore that area as well. Okay, cool. So going back to the Career advising, what do you think has been your biggest learning in that area? 

Liz: Well, I mean the first year, there's a lot to learn because you're learning about you go to a lot of updates at the universities and learn about the courses they have on offer and what's changing. And I remember at the beginning thinking it was a huge amount of information. It's not hard to understand. You've just got to remember it all. So that was a big learning curve at the start learning about all the different courses on offer who offered what, what requirements, entry requirements were needed and that kind of thing. So that was probably the biggest learning curve. And then now I'm an HOD, that's been another learning curve, learning how to deal with staff and manage responsibility is also a learning curve. So those two things were probably my biggest challenges. Yeah. 

Debbie: Do you have people coming in from the universities also to give chats? 

Liz: Yeah, quite a lot. students. So the school I'm in, we run one night at the start of the year for the year 13s in their parents to come in and hear. So all the liaisons from the universities come on the same night. But usually most schools have them come in one at a time at lunchtimes in the first term, then in the third term we have them come in again for what's called course planning. And we do those individually. So students who've chosen a university can then look at what actual subjects or what papers they'll do the following year. We run careers expos, so we've got one where I'm working now, where they all come to that, and that's a couple of days. We get to try and get the students along to those. So that's not just the universities, but all the tertiary providers. And then the universities always invite us to their update days, which is where