Every great idea started with a glass of wine in hand and some good friends...right? Well, this story was kind of like that.

For the past nine years, I have dedicated myself to being a primary school teacher in East Auckland, driven by my passion for nurturing young minds. Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of guiding and supporting students of different ages from local schools, helping them unlock their potential and fostering a genuine love for learning.

I have spent a good chunk of time teaching new entrants, which was an eye-opener, to say the least. It was never my preferred year level to teach, but I soon grew to love the excitement and joy five-year-olds hold when they start school. The amount of care, love, attention, skills, and fundamentals that new entrant teachers provide on a daily basis to both the child and their parents is truly amazing.

During my time, I came across many parents who desired to support their children before starting school but lacked guidance on where to begin, which resources to utilize, or what basic skills they could send their child to school with. This thought stuck with me for a couple of years, pondering how we could reach parents with different work schedules, children in different preschool programs, and scattered across the country.

At the beginning of 2023, the ideas started bouncing around. Many evenings were spent with a close friend discussing how we could exit teaching but still be involved in the teaching world. The idea of delivering a product to support parents and New Zealand new entrant teachers kept resurfacing, and so over a glass of wine one evening, The Teacher Edit was born.

The vision behind this product is to support parents with the transition between kindergarten and primary school and to help ease the workload for our new entrant teachers by creating a product that would give children exposure to the very basic skills to ensure that once they get to school, they can move on to their next development and skills.

This kit has so much love behind it. Many teaching colleagues, friends, and family have put countless hours into fine-tuning, offering wisdom and knowledge to create the "School Readiness Kit." A huge thank you to those people behind the scenes; this product would not be here today without you.

A very special thanks to Gemma, who spent countless hours and many late nights going back and forth with manufacturers and product design to bring this product to life.

Our incredibly talented artist behind the beautiful drawings on the resources is one of my good friends, Caroline Heughan, whom I had the pleasure of meeting through teaching around three years ago.

The ongoing love I have for education and creating products is just the beginning of this new adventure. I am truly grateful for the love and support that has made this dream a reality, and I am sure there will be some exciting things around the corner.

Much love,

Shayna