When the smoke clears

Dayle Sorrensen has lost 40 years of records and teaching aids to arsonists.

It was the day the reading recovery teacher gulped and choked back the tears. 'It was a wee bit emotional,” explains Dayle Sorrensen.

A few of the older students at Merivale Primary had sought her out, given her a big hug and asked if she was alright.

That's the way Merivale Primary works apparently. 'We care about each other.”

But Dayle has every reason not to feel alright. Because one Sunday, three weeks ago, someone torched her reading recovery room.

An arson, a senseless and wanton act of vandalism that caused considerable upset for some young and impressionable lives.

'I am not too sure if they thought that I was in the fire. But it was emotional,” says Dayle.

And it was emotional because 40 years of Dayle's records and teaching aids in that room went up in smoke – irreplaceable and precious stuff needed to give kids a leg up with one of life's crucial disciplines, their reading.

'Their face's just dropped when they realised that everything they'd done, all their reading and writing books had just gone. You can see them thinking, is this the end?”

This is a story about the impact of an arson, in this case when kids do things for kicks without thought to the consequences. And other kids feel violated.

'The reading recovery room is a place where pupils with difficulties escape the pressure of the classroom for some one-on-one time with a teacher.

'You can and do make a difference. And they get quite excited when they realise how quickly they're progressing through the levels.”

It's a quiet time where the attention of the teacher is fully-focused. Now it's a black, charred hole, heavy with the smell of smoke and flames and arson and cordoned off with crime scene tape.

So when the perpetrators stuffed clothes into a gap in the weather boards behind the small classroom and set fire it's odds on they didn't intend or realise the damage they would cause.

Teacher became motivator. 'I had to jolly them along, give them a boost; reassure them. It will be fine, we can get books and we will move to another building and continue to be positive” says Dayle.

She's given four decades of her working life to the kids of Merivale. And a lot more.

'As a teacher you tend to buy things so the kids have extras, extra games and activities that I have made or bought over the years and…gone!”

And while the kids were standing by the reading recovery teacher, principal Jan Tinetti was standing by her pupils. It was suggested she should look at her kids for the perpetrators.

”Our children wouldn't do this. They're very proud of this school.”

Meanwhile, people are being kind. 'Other schools have made sure I have what I need and we have borrowed other stuff until it can be replaced.”

When The Weekend Sun spoke to Dayle she should have been on holiday. But she has a reading recovery programme to salvage from the ashes.

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