MR B. K. DAWBER RETIRING AFTER VARIED CAREER

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28758, 2 December 1958, Page 16

MR B. K. DAWBER RETIRING AFTER VARIED CAREER

Mr Bruce K. Dawber, viceprincipal of the Christchurch Teachers’ College, will retire at the end of this year. He has held his present post for four years and has been on the staff of the college for nearly 10 years as lecturer in education and in the principals and practices of teachMr Dawber’s career has several “original” features. He was an original pupil of the Linwood North School and, as such,, proposed the toast of the school at the recent jubilee celebrations. He then attended the Christchurch Technical College and was a member of the original Technical Old Boys’ Rugby team.

On leaving school, Mr Dawber joined his father’s building business. He remembers that one of his first jobs was removing the original slates from , the Plaza Theatre building, when it was converted from offices, and transferring them to the roof of the Commercial Bank of Australia on the corner of Manchester and Hereford streets. His next job was on building the freezing works at Kaiapoi. Mr Dawber then tried his hand as an apprentice mechanical engineer, made another switch to the literary department of the Christchurch “Sun,” and finally settled on teaching. After pupil teaching at Linwood North he entered the Teachers’ College, was president of the Students* Association in his final year, and played football for the college. Master And Man

Spencerville (sole charge) was Mr Dawber’s first school and among his pupils was Percy Spencer, “a bright young spark.” Mr W. P. Spencer is now secre-tary-manager of the Canterbury. Education Board, which administers the Teachers* College. The men are still firm friends.

Glenavy (sole charge) school in South Canterbury was the next appointment, then Phillipstown, which at that time was one of the two “associate” schools of the Normal School, used for teaching practice. Mr Dawber remembers that teachers had three or four students in the room at one time. While head of the two-teacher Killinchy School, Mr Dawber was married and soon after moved to Willowbridge, near Waimate, to secure living quarters.

Since 1939 Mr Dawber has held Christchurch appointments. Early in this period (though Tate in life) he secured the provisional matriculation and in short order

Won the degrees of bachelor and master of arts and a diploma in education—all by extra-mural study. The schools where he was an assistant ■ master were Woolston, Christchurch East, and Christchurch South Intermediate (on the original staff). From Christchurch East he made a short visit to the United Kingdom studying education. Call Up

While supervising cricket one afternoon, Mr Dawber received orders to report for duty next morning in the National Reserve. Japan had entered the war. He was stationed mainly in the Sumner defence area as a lieutenant in charge of a machine-gun platoon. In 1943 Mr Dawber returned to teaching as first assistant at St. Albans and then transferred to the Christchurch Vocational Guidance Centre in the period

when it did much of the educational and vocational guidance and psychological testing for returning servicemen seeking rehabilitation. In 1945 Mr Dawber returned to Christchurch South Intermediate as senior assistant During this period he also lectured for kindergarten trainees. Mr Dawber was president of the Sunbeam Free Kindergarten for many years and represented it on the Christchurch .Free Kindergarten Association. He was also on the committee of the Nursery Play Centres’ Association.

Appointment as a lecturer at the Teachers’ College in 1949 and as vice-principal in 1953 followed. Mr Dawber made another extensive tour of the United Kingdom with his wife, in 1955, studying teaching and teachers and then they spent three months in America. • Mr Dawber still has interests as varied as the Jobs he has held. He represents the college onr the Civic Music Council, is a member of the Harmonic Society, and keen on school music festivals. He is an ardent colour photographer, a member of the Friends of the Museum and of the Canterbury Society of Arts. But. best of all. he still likes woodwork and amateur building. Alone he has made extensive alterations to the home where he has lived for 28 years—“surely a record for a teacher”—and he was a useful worker in the building of Mackay Lodge, the Teachers’ College retreat at Coopers Creek. Mr and Mrs Dawber will go abroad again next year—this time on family interests. Their son, Keith (a trained teacher, who later joined the physics staff of the University of Canterbury), is’ at Florida State University on a Fulbright award for post-graduate work in nuclear physics. Their daughter, Helen, also a teacher, is married to Mr R. G. T. Bennett, who has a post-graduate research fellowship at Harwell, also in nuclear physics.