Our Team
Our fully qualified and registered teachers enable us to provide exceptional care and excellence in pre-school education. With constant training and enrichment programmes, both nationally and internationally, our teachers have a combined teaching experience of over 100 years between them.
Our teaching team includes teachers who have taught in both primary and early childhood education settings, resulting in us having a diverse skill set, which greatly benefits our children.
Many of our dedicated team of teachers, have been with us since our founding years, and continue to foster nurturing relationships with our children and their families.
Our teachers choose to teach here because they work in an environment that offers excellent child to teacher ratios, a well resourced purpose built Centre, and ongoing professional development and training.
Our teachers are selected through a careful interview procedure, recognising their personal qualities of warmth, empathy and sensitivity to children, as well as their qualifications, experience in teaching and child management practices.
We warmly welcome you to come and visit us here at Red Beach Early Learning Centre, and experience our unique environment for yourselves.
Danny (Danella) Climo
Centre Manager and Teacher
Tena koutou katoa
Danella (Danny) Climo hails originally from Whangarei, and brings with her a rich cultural heritage of both Maori and English from her parents and extended whanau. Danny has lived in and around the Hibiscus Coast for over 25 years.
Danny is an experienced and fully qualified early childhood teacher, and shares the Head Teacher position here at RBELC. Fostering strong relationships with children,whanau and her teaching team; and professional learning in areas such as: policy creation and review; teacher registration, curriculum and teaching are just some of the areas where Danny has a strong interest in her teaching provision and development.
Danny is a student of Shorin-Ryu Karate Do, and has recently attained her Shodan grading (black belt) after years of training. Travelling to Okinawa Japan, to train with the old masters who teach and lead this style of karate has been a definite high-light in the last year. Danny is now training for her Nidan grading (2nd Dan black belt) with aspirations to receive this in a few years time. Danny is a long serving, and very experienced teacher here at RBELC, and celebrated her 25th year of service in 2024. Wow, where did that time go??!!
Lisa Taylor
Centre Manager and Teacher
Lisa Taylor has harboured a passion for Early Childhood Education from a very young age. After graduating from Auckland College of Education in 1995, she spent two years traveling and teaching overseas. Upon returning to New Zealand, Lisa transitioned to the primary sector, where she dedicated five years to teaching early primary students.
Following the start of her own family, Lisa returned to the Early Childhood sector. Highly recommended by a prominent Auckland academic lecturer, Lisa chose to enrol her children at Red Beach Early Learning Centre. Soon after, she accepted a teaching position and has been a valued member of our team since 2008.
Lisa believes that building solid, trustworthy relationships with children and their families is the first step in fostering quality Early Childhood Education, which establishes a robust foundation for a child's future learning.
Raewyn Simpson
Teacher
Raewyn is a māmā to two young children, Mischa and Beauden, who attend school and preschool here locally in Red Beach. A big part of Raewyn’s teaching and learning journey has been through the Reggio Emilia Philosophy, highlighting a real love and enjoyment for creating intimate learning spaces that come alive and can be transformed by the children as they investigate and delve deeper into their curiosities.
Raewyn has worked in the early years sector for many years and is passionate about providing children opportunities to embrace and express themselves through multiple creative languages, acknowledging the many unique ways that children communicate and share their thinking, ideas and theories about the world around them.
Raewyn acknowledges and respects the socio-cultural nature of the world we live in and the powerful value our families bring with us, whilst highlighting the value and potential of seeing oneself as a unique individual with individualised learning approaches.
Caroline Metcalfe
Teacher
Hi, my name is Caroline.
I was born in Takapuna, Auckland and grew up on the north shore of Auckland.
Previously to working in early childhood education (E.C.E.), I have worked in administration and dairy farming. I have a certificate in fashion design, and I am a qualified beauty therapist. For the Past 14 years however, I have been working in, what is my passion, ECE and I have a degree in Bachelor in Teaching (E.C.E).
I believe strongly in maintaining respect, patience, and kindness. I further believe in the importance of understanding children’s needs and in supporting their empowerment and holistic development.
It is essential to me, to empower children to make choices by providing opportunities each day for open ended activities such as heuristic play and various free play activities. I also believe in sourcing other enriching activities, which will encourage children to learn life skills through play, in turn helping them to better manage and live a quality of life that helps to accomplish ambitions and live to a fuller potential. Furthermore, I believe it is necessary to provide safety and security for children.
Leslie Carroll
Teacher
My teaching career began in 1980 after graduating from Northshore Teachers College. Since then I have worked pretty much continually taking a short break for my OE and then to have our daughter. Over this time I have taught in public kindergarten, a community crèche, nannied, and two privately owned long day child care centres before coming to RBELC.
First and foremost I put relationships at the fore. Developing meaningful relationships with children, whanau and co teachers. Without this there is no learning.
Over the years, my teaching philosophy has been shaped by play based learning, Te Whāriki (NZ early childhood curriculum, and the philosophy of Reggio Emilia. All three of these have allowed my teaching philosophy to develop into one where I highly value play as the learning of childhood, that children are viewed as competent and capable from birth having an inate desire and curiosity to actively construct their own understandings and learning.
A philosophy where my role, is to follow their interests, scaffolding their learning, and create environments to support their curiosity creativity and imagination.
Children and their families deserve a place where they are respected, feel physically and emotionally safe, their individual cultural identity and language is acknowledged, where they can develop at their own rate, where fun is compulsory and a culture of life long learning is promoted. RBELC looks like this to me.