Information about & for Tutors

Maureen Howard, pictured hereis one of our contributors to learning guides. She taught for a decade as one of the longest-serving Sustainable Living tutors. Based in Dunedin, this psychology graduate and local radio broadcaster has a passion for influencing consumer choices and behaviour for future living skills, and she's fun as an evening class tutor too - her classes were usually full and after the taught series many participants organised themselves into continuing learning groups! See this Dunedin blog site (used until 2015, still on-line.)

Hutt City, Upper Hutt, Timaru, Christchurch and some other councils have taken this class-based approach to delivery of Sustainable Living programme.The tutors find that learners' involvement in discussion and guided reading for several sessions, has much more impact on subsequent actions in their lives than just browsing a website or attending a single workshop. Visit the district pages to see what's happening in your locality. A new set of courses are starting up in Christchurch.

If you live within a member council area that is not yet offering courses and think you have the skills and knowledge to become a Sustainable Living or Future Living Skills class tutor, make contact with the National Coordinator, sending in your CV, so that we can create a register of potential tutors.  Email  rhys@sustainableliving.org.nz or send letter by mail to SLET, PO box 58 Geraldine 7956.   Indicate the town or suburbs where you would be prepared to teach, as we don't encourage long-distance commuting and do please say if there are times of year and/or week that you'd prefer. We may use the Chalkle website to help link tutors and learners in some areas (e.g. Wellington).

Also, if you have attended this course previously, let us know when writing - we have found that some of the best tutors are former students!  Previous training in adult community or continuing education is useful but not essential: many polytechnics offer such courses, as the skills required with voluntary adult learners do differ from skills for teaching younger age groups.

The learning guides and supporting materials have been developed to suit both tutor use and self-help study groups. Download the guides here.