School Staff
Stewart Allan
Teacher
I’ve been teaching for close to thirty years across New Zealand and Australia, in environments ranging from high-achieving academic schools to alternative settings where students had stopped believing school was built for them. The common thread, and the thing that drew me to Dara, is that many gifted students don’t fit a standard mould. They think differently, lose interest quickly when work feels off-target, and need learning that actually meets them where they are.
I teach across Maths, Science, English, and Music, and I like the overlaps. A student working through harmonic ratios in music is doing real mathematics. One writing a short story is often working through something they can’t yet say directly. In my experience, students benefit when those connections are taken seriously rather than kept separate.
Music has been the other long thread in my life. I’m a singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. I’ve toured through Europe, recorded across a range of styles, and written and directed music for stage productions and large-scale events. That work has shaped how I teach. There’s a craft to be respected, but also a point where structure needs to give way so something more original can emerge.
At Dara, the personalised model allows me to work at the real level of the student, not the assumed one. When something hooks them, we run with it. When thinking gets shallow, I invite students to go deeper. My role is to provide enough structure for students to feel grounded, and then give them space to progress their thinking.