Vaping, mental health and ‘sometimes foods’: Bella Ireland revisits the mobile classroom of her youth to see how it has evolved.

A lot has changed since I was last sitting in the Life Education classroom. I’m much taller, a bit wiser, and I’m now wearing a nametag stating “Bella Ireland, The Spinoff”. I pass the “kiss & drop” area, and I’m met with the classroom on wheels, parked over a hopscotch court at St Joseph’s Catholic School. It’s covered in a shiny vinyl mural featuring rolling hills, a blue sky, a familiar giraffe’s smiling face, and the words, “We are all unique and special”. 

I’m still slightly hungover from Saturday night, feeling guilty  as I head in to see Healthy Harold. But as I’m about to find out, I’m not the only one who’s changed during this time. 

Inside the rickety mobile classroom, at the back with the class teacher, we watch excited students aged six to eight wander in. It feels smaller than I remembered, with the same slightly claustrophobic carpeted walls, floors, and ceilings. It’s dimly lit, like a cinema, and has the smell of a stuffy kids’ classroom, with a light undertone of air freshener. 

I have vague memories of my time as a 10(ish)-year-old heading in to see Harold. We learnt about the food pyramid, how to be kind to one another, and a few years on, drugs – all from a giraffe in a dark van. 

The class I’m currently attending is about personality traits: understanding what ours are, and what they mean. It’s one of the two classes the kids at St Joseph’s will have with Life Education during its visit to the school. Words like “polite”, “loud”, “clever”, and “funny” are written on multi-coloured, laminated pieces of paper and stuck onto the wall. The kids let out giggles as they learn a bit about each other and their teacher, and play games teaching them how to be honest, and a good leader. 

Eventually Harold makes his star appearance, and the kids’ eyes widen in awe of the talking giraffe. His head is poking out from behind a black curtain where the teacher’s arm hides. He’s made of a bright yellow felt that scrunches around his snout to the opening of his red mouth. He’s wide eyed, with two concerningly big pupils, and luscious, long eyelashes that reach up to his ears. Above sits his haphazardly glued-on antlers and a small pile of fluff (ie hair) on top of his head.

Harold’s puppeteer, Carleen Craig, has taught at Life Education for the past seven years. Before this, she was a teacher for 13 years, and remembers “sitting at the back of the class watching too”. After the session with the St Joseph’s students, she shares with me how the lessons have evolved over the years: these days, they “tailor everything to the schools’ needs”, she says, providing options for classes to tackle tamariki’s specific challenges like mental health and well-being, bullying, obesity, and substance use. 

There’s a new 3D human body diagram rather than the plastic head and torso I remember as a kid, and these days they educate students about online safety. While there are many expected techy advancements, certain viewpoints and attitudes have shifted, too.

For one, there’s no longer any food pyramid. “It’s long gone,” Craig says, and a “very outdated model”. Instead they use “Harold’s pātaka”, made up of four cupboards, all the same size. Each cupboard represents an element of a balanced diet: fruit and vegetables, grain foods, milk and milk products, and proteins, with a shed off to the side that represents “sometimes foods”.  

“We’ve got legumes and nuts, and tofu, lentils, all that stuff. So it’s very inclusive of all diets,” says Craig, helping to remove some of the stigma around food choices that kids often pick on each other for. The “sometimes food” shed, which includes chips, ice-cream, and cookies, is no longer called “junk food”. It’s about understanding that “it’s not a good idea to eat these everyday,” Craig says, rather than adding a layer of shame to the shed foods. 

Then there’s drug education. I couldn’t wait to bring up with Craig my key takeaway from the Life Education lesson on drugs I received at intermediate. Growing up in suburban Havelock North, I didn’t know much about drugs as a kid: I’d heard of weed and cigarettes, but that was pretty much it. I vividly remember the moment of horror when my Life Ed teacher shared with the class how glue, my beloved arts and crafts tool, could be used as a drug. 

Confused, I immediately put my hand up to question how this was possible. As I recall it, the teacher then responded with a blow-by-blow “how to” on sniffing glue.

Craig seemed surprised – maybe shocked – to hear my story about learning how to sniff glue in intermediate. Back then, the vibe of the class on drugs was how damaging they are to users and their loved ones, with the overarching message being to avoid them at all costs. Today, the Life Education drug program is different, Craig says, with the aim of being “the ambulance at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom.” Classes still detail the effects of using alcohol and cannabis, but vaping education has replaced the lessons on smoking, and the emphasis is on waiting “until your brain has finished developing before you try any of these,” Craig says. 

Then, of course, there’s the touchy topic of gender. Craig said one of the most common questions from students is, “Is Harold a boy or a girl?” or “What does Harold identify as?” While gender is not something Life Education touches on often, Craig says that when it is discussed, it is “only taught in consultation with the school”. Craig adapts her approach to gender based on each school’s attitude, “using the language they’re using”, and keeps the focus on biological education.

Although my own memories of Healthy Harold’s classes are, looking back, rather strange and sometimes questionable, I cherish them. Based on the reactions of the kids in the class I attend, Harold still brings joy despite the updated lessons. 

At the end of the final session at St Joseph’s, the kids are handed activity books filled with stickers and games. In classic Catholic-school style, they all melodically chant, “Thank you Carleen and god bless you,” as they step out of the classroom on wheels. They can’t wait for their next lesson.