Ruth took up her role as Lecturer in Laidlaw’s Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) programme at the start of 2024, based at the Christchurch campus.

Ruth holds her B.A. degree from the University of Canterbury. She completed her Teaching qualification at College of Education, Palmerston North, and her Education Diploma through Massey University’s distance learning programme.

Ruth is married to Yogi. They spent the first three years of marriage in Singapore, where child number one entered their world. Returning to New Zealand, they added three more children to their whānau and now have 14 grandchildren and a 15th due later in 2025.

For 13 years Ruth was full-time invested in raising her children and served on the relatively new Board of Trustees at Feilding Intermediate School. This awakened the urge to become a teacher herself, so she took the plunge into teacher training.

In 2004 she moved back to Christchurch to take up the position of Deputy Principal, Head of Senior College at her alma mater, Middleton Grange School and left that role at the end of 2023.

Gardening is Ruth’s preferred leisure indulgence, with crossword puzzles and reading running a very close second. Ruth’s passion for teaching stems from a strong conviction that the Gospel is in fact the Greatest Story Ever Told and loves the opportunities life provides for sharing this treasure with others and encouraging them to use whatever role they assume as a vehicle for sharing their own testimony through “being” and sometimes using words.