Cambridge Middle School teacher Robyn Gibbeson will hang up her apron today.
Cambridge Middle School food technology teacher Robyn Gibbeson is hanging up her apron today (December 12) after four decades in the job.
Retiring Cambridge Middle School teacher Robyn Gibbeson helps students Santino Van Vugt (left) and Declyn Bourke taste test their Cornish pasties. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins
Robyn, who started at the school in 1985, said she’d decided to retire because “all the stars aligned”.
“It’s 40 years, it’s 2025, and I was born in 1955, so I’m turning 70, and it’s time. It’s just time,” she said.
“Cambridge Middle School has been an all-encompassing part of my DNA, but the time has come to hand the baton over to someone else.”
Gareth Cogan, who has been teaching food technology at Hillcrest High School, will take her role.
There are a few things Robyn won’t mind leaving behind.
“I won’t miss the laundry, or doing duty in the rain, or the lost property,” she said. “And I won’t miss my daily trips to the supermarket.”
Frequent grocery missions are a nod to the long-serving teacher’s dedication. For years, she has scoured the aisles five nights a week, making sure her students have hand-picked ingredients for their banana choc chip muffins, savoury pinwheels, stuffed potatoes, Cornish pasties, and recipes they’ve chosen themselves.
“I know all the people who work at Woolworths now,” she said.
“I go in and have a chat; it’s quite social. There are worse places to be.
“I’ve got most of my positive feedback from parents and past students I’ve met at the supermarket.”
Learning assistant Christine O’Connor said she would miss Robyn, who she worked with for 22 years and described as “fantastic”.
“I just love the way she teaches the students all the different techniques, like rubbing in the flour and creaming the butter and sugar and all those things kids need to know,” she said.
“She’s got great classroom control and a terrific memory for names – absolutely amazing.”
With four decades of memories to draw on, Robyn has a couple of standouts.
Having her classroom burgled by a considerate crook was one.
The thoughtful thief struck in the early 2000s, back when Gordon Grantham was the town’s police sergeant.
“I came into my office and thought, ‘oh, my laptop’s not there’, Robyn said.
“And there were dishes in the dishrack. This guy had been in, cooked up a meal of bacon and eggs from ingredients in the fridge and then done the dishes. He was an ex-student and the police said to me I’d taught him well. So that was an interesting one.”
She also remembers shoving Simon Watts, now a government minister, out of the way to extinguish a flaming pan full of spaghetti bolognese by dumping salt on the flames.
Heat, oil and hormones can be a volatile mix in a middle school cooking room.
“I have to have a high standard of behaviour in here for health and safety reasons,” Robyn said.
“I’ve always tried to be firm, but fair.”
Cornish pasties
Year 7 student Asha Ryan gave a sense of that as she spoke about her teacher.
“She likes to have her way and you’ve got to follow her way,” she says. “She’s strict but she makes us amazing food. She’s just really nice.”
Twelve-year-old Hannah Gascoigne agreed.
“She’s a bit strict, but she’s really good at cooking and she keeps everybody in line.”
Jessamy Olsen, 11, appreciated her teacher’s kindness.
“If somebody doesn’t like something in a recipe she’ll change it for them,” she said. “Say you don’t like cheese or something, she’ll give you that cottage stuff.”
Teaching children has been Robyn’s “life, love and passion” for 40 years.
Students hadn’t changed much over that time, she said.
“They’re probably the same – they all love to eat, so I think half the battle’s won. But many parents are so time poor now, they don’t have enough time to teach their children to cook. Some students come in here and they don’t know how to wash dishes or hold a fork.”
Born and bred in Hamilton, Robyn grew up “immersed into the world of fabrics and sewing from a young age” thanks to her mother, a dressmaker and trained pattern cutter with a passion for cooking.
“Amazing” Melville Intermediate and Melville High School fabric teachers inspired her to study fabric and food for three years at the Auckland College of Education, and she graduated with a Diploma of Distinction in home economics.
Cambridge Middle School teacher Robyn Gibbeson will hang up her apron today. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins
After a three-year “baptism by fire” teaching stint at Te Puke High School, Robyn spent three years overseas, then returned to Hamilton to work in well-known fabric store Pollock and Milne.
In August 1985, she secured a home economics contract at Cambridge Intermediate, since renamed Cambridge Middle School, and she has worked there ever since.
Daryl Gibbs, the last of five principals Robyn worked with, expected her students would remember “a very firm and direct teacher who likes things done a certain way”, while staff would miss “a very kind and caring colleague”.
“She’s the person who buys the leaving gifts,” he said. “She makes the cakes. She’s made so many cakes for staff birthdays, it’s ridiculous.”
Robyn said she was “really excited about retiring” because she had an adventure ahead.
“I finish on the 12th and fly out to the UK on the 13th to visit friends who are like family and meet a new baby.”
After that, she has some ideas.
“I’ve been asked if I could work at the Busy Bees op shop and I’ll probably go back to the Mosaic Choir. I’ve got a niece in Australia, and I’ll be going back to England I’d imagine. Gardening, walking, enjoying Cambridge for what it’s got to offer.”
Cambridge Middle School teacher Robyn Gibbeson will hang up her apron today. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins
She might need a part-time job at Woolworths, she laughs.
“I know the aisles intimately.”
Robyn also intends to continue volunteering for the Salvation Army, where she found an artwork that has spent all year beside her classroom whiteboard.
For her, the words flowing across it say it all:
He aha te mea nui o te ao? – What is the most important thing in the world?
He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. – It is people, it is people, it is people.
“When I applied for this position in 1985, a 40-year tenure was never on my radar,” she said of the job that consumed most of her working life.
“But to be perfectly honest with you, there is no place that I would rather have been.”
Cambridge Middle School teacher Robyn Gibbeson will hang up her apron today. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins
