\u201cIsaac was relentless in his pursuit to inspire students to find a love for reading. He had a gift for finding an in to get a reluctant student reading, and he gave away hundreds of books over the years from his own collection to help our students start their own personal libraries at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas worked at the school for 20 years, most recently as the head of the English department.<\/p>\n
Brett said the connections he made with students would be long-lasting.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe always saw our students as whole people first, he saw beyond behaviour to who they were and had endless time and patience for kids that others might dismiss … He was an at-school dad to so many of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of teachers who remain in one place for so long eventually get a bit tired and jaded, but Isaac never lost his passion and energy. While he had a hilariously cynical personality, he would come into every single year with fresh ideas and renewed enthusiasm. He made teaching in incredibly tough times for education genuinely fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Isaac Thomas taught at Auckland’s McAuley High School for 20 years.<\/p>\n
Thomas was described as a \u201ctotally selfless\u201d man, even in the days leading to his death.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he received his diagnosis, his primary concern was making sure we were all okay in our department and looking after our students… <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very at peace with his prognosis: he knew he\u2019d had a real, profound, lasting impact on hundreds of lives through his service in education – his students had told him so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Catholic, girls-only \u014ct\u0101huhu-based college earlier paid tribute in an online message.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday our school has suffered a great loss of an amazing and loving English teacher, Mr Thomas.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe advocated for our girls to be their best at McAuley and beyond and continued to challenge staff to work together to improve literacy skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cRest in eternal peace, Mr Thomas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The school has a roll of 800 students from Year 9 to 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIsaac was relentless in his pursuit to inspire students to find a love for reading. He had a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[806,682,3595,84,29194,3989,11908,8619,137568,42,2959,296,123955,13630,9851,1446,144137,43,92925,53501,15120,4062,6649,1516,7574,113,2044,14005,40,38,41,39,13983],"class_list":["post-485083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-as","tag-being","tag-by","tag-education","tag-educator","tag-effort","tag-english","tag-fun","tag-genuinely","tag-headlines","tag-high","tag-into","tag-isaac","tag-legendary","tag-longtime","tag-making","tag-mcauley","tag-news","tag-passionate","tag-poured","tag-remembered","tag-school","tag-schools","tag-staff","tag-teacher","tag-thomas","tag-time","tag-times","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tough"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}