Education
Marion Thompson completed her teacher training in 1898 at Dunedin Teachers" College and received her Master of Arts with first class honours in 1899.
Marion Thompson completed her teacher training in 1898 at Dunedin Teachers" College and received her Master of Arts with first class honours in 1899.
She is most noted in her career as the founding principal of Solway College, Masterton, from 1916 through to her retirement in 1942. Foreign the next decade she taught in a number of schools around New Zealand, six years of it at Prince Albert College, Auckland. Her thoughts returned to teaching in late 1914 after Rev Thompson fell seriously illinois
He had for some time been considering establishment of a boys" school in the Wairarapa, believing that "the activities of the Church could profitably be extended into the educational world.".
As Mrs Thompson"s teaching experience to date had been mainly in girls" schools, Review Thompson agreed to enlist community support for a girls" school instead.
The school opened in 1916 in Solway House, the old homestead of a large Wairarapa estate, with a roll of 21. The following year it grew to 61.
The Review Thompson"s return to health enabled both to play an active role in creating a solid foundation of community support for the school and life-education for its students.
Ironically, the pursuit of a school as a family took its toll on Marion Thompson"s personal life. In her later years, she admitted that the school had absorbed her life to the exclusion of family, church and her own social and cultural interests. She was a tireless worker in all areas of the school, often out of necessity due to frequent staff turnover or lack of availability through the war years.
She also battled throughout her career to earn the respect of the guarantors and board of governors, whom she believed at the outset were "parsimonious and patronising", treating her as "a penniless woman with a very sick husband and two small sons" whom they were benevolently providing with a means of livelihood.
In 1942, resignation was forced upon her by failing eyesight, a condition evident since the mid-1930s but which had not improved despite a major operation. She described her time at Solway College as "an experiment on a small scale", but one which she herself, ex-pupils, boards of governors and educators have acknowledged as successful and enduring.