LUANA HASELL is about to quit her job. Like many native English-speaking teachers approaching the end of their contracts, she has decided it is time to move on.
Many will assume she is returning to Western Australia because she has, like many others, been driven to the end of her teaching tether. But this is not the usual story of NET woes. Hasell contacted Education Post with one final message before she departs, that it is possible to be a very happy and professionally fulfilled NET.
She has taught for four years at the Hong Kong Management Association K S Lo College, a band two school in Tin Shui Wai, a new town in the New Territories far from the NET comfort zone of Hong Kong's more cosmopolitan heart. But, according to Hasell, the school is no backwater and lives up to its sponsoring body's name by being big on progressive management. And it is the school's leadership that has obviously contributed to creating the happy NET.
'I cannot praise this school enough,' she says. 'It is a friendly place where there is always something happening. You don't see a child sleeping. You don't hear voices raised. What you do see is education going on. Kids are working across the curricula, across the years. All subjects seem to do things outside the classroom.'
Hasell doesn't debunk the gloomy stories of other NETs. 'It has been described as a lottery. It is, and I won,' she says. 'Others got stuck in places where just existing is difficult. They are not spoken to, not helped.
'It is not about the band of the school. Some NETs in band one schools have difficult times. It's about whether the management can deploy you to give as much to your kids and colleagues as possible, and to make your life as professionally enjoyable as possible.'