Nine-year-old Summer Shepherd was principal of Tauwhare School last Thursday, thanks to a winning bid at a school fundraiser.
The year five student would like to be a magizoologist one day, running her own zoo full of mystical animals like unicorns, thestrals, three-headed dogs and, possibly, dragons.
“I’m a huge Harry Potter fan,” she said. “I’ve read all the books except the seventh one because mum says it’s too scary.”
Alternative career goals include becoming an author – and filling a personal library with books – or a marine biologist, or a nurse in a children’s ward, or a famous dancer. “I want to dance for the king and queen,” she said.
School principal isn’t currently an ambition, but she enjoyed her time in power. Armed with a Harry Potter wand, she felt quite at home being addressed as “Miss Shepherd”.
“I like being bossy,” she admitted.
The first thing she did was walk into regular principal Chris May’s office, sling her feet onto the desk and sip a velvety hot chocolate from the staffroom.
“I enjoyed it when Mrs Reeve, my teacher, asked me to go into my class, I held my wand and told them if they didn’t behave I’d curse them,” she said.
A staunch believer in fairies and magic, she declared September 19 ‘sparkle day’ and wore an eye-catching hot-pink sequined dress with a matching headband, purple bling-covered sneakers and a cloak covered in glimmering rainbow petals to school.
She rewarded the best-dressed students with chocolate Freddo frogs.
“My friend Vivienne brought a sparkly blue mermaid tail with little sequins – nobody could beat that,” she said.
She amended a school rule to allow senior students into the new junior playground, and ran a spelling test.
Her seven-year-old sister and deputy principal for the day Heidi, also stunning in sparkles, chipped in by running a lesson on complex sentence structure in room 1.
An evening disco dance competition brought an end to Summer’s reign.
Tauwhare School principal for the day Summer Sherpherd (left) with her sister and deputy principal for the day Heidi (right) and principal Chris May.
