While Green School New Zealand will be sad to farewell its Principal, Stuart MacAlpine, at the end of the school year, it is excited to be able to celebrate his departure to one of the leading education foundations in the world.
MacAlpine was recently recruited by the LEGO Foundation – an organisation that sits within the LEGO brand we all know and love. The foundation’s purpose is to empower children through play-based learning to become creative, lifelong learners, and MacAlpine will be part of its Global Programmes team based in Europe, working with schools and systems across the world.
“My role will be to support schools and systems that want to move towards the kind of joyful, co-constructed, playful learning that we already value so much at Green School.
“It is a credit to Green School, and New Zealand’s entire creative and child-centred educational landscape, that the LEGO Foundation came here to recruit people to support its mission.”
Green School CEO Chris Edwards said that with MacAlpine being known as one of the top educators in the world, the team was not surprised he had been sought by the LEGO Foundation.
“We are extremely proud of where Stuart has led our school in our opening year. We have seen first hand the positive guidance, leadership, knowledge and influence his presence has had on our educational environment.
“While we are sad he will be leaving the GSNZ campus at the end of the year, we feel incredibly fortunate to have had someone of his internationally-recognised calibre help set the foundations of our curriculum, and look forward to having his continued support from afar as we grow and develop our learning programme.”
MacAlpine said he was proud to have been part of Green School’s foundation year, and looked forward to aligning with the Green School network in the future.
“I am very proud to have spent a year helping such a brilliant educational movement get off the ground in one of the world’s most sustainable, ethical, beautiful, tolerant and kind countries. It has been a pleasure.
“I will continue to provide consultation to the Green School movement, and build partners to support the ongoing work here in New Zealand and around the world.”