Rose Dickison is an active relaxer. 

She loves the benefits, both mental and physical, that being active brings her, and she can’t wait to share that with others. 

Rose has just signed on as the Eastern Southland School Facilitator with Active Southland’s Healthy Active Learning team. 

Healthy Active Learning is a joint government initiative between Sport New Zealand and the Ministries of Health and Education that seeks to improve the wellbeing of children and young people, through healthy eating and drinking and quality physical activity. 

As part of this initiative, Active Southland is supporting 70 schools throughout Southland to better understand and implement the New Zealand Health and Physical Education curriculum and recognise the value that can come from our children being more physically active. 

For Rose, who has a background in teaching, it is an opportunity to demonstrate the value of physical activity, primarily through play, in the wellbeing of children. 

“My goal is to make positive changes for children. With my background in play, I want to help teachers see the real value in play and how that flows on for children’s learning. Using the positives of movement and showing how that can be used to help with all areas of children’s wellbeing. 

“I’m looking forward to building relationships with the schools, seeing what I can bring to this role, and supporting teachers to get children to be more active.”   

In her spare time, you’ll find Rose walking her dogs and spending time in nature. She has also recently, after many years on the marching field, swapped her marching boots for hunting boots and has been heading out hunting with her husband. 

“I’m just enjoying learning new things.” 

Article added: Wednesday 26 January 2022