His teaching journey started in 1996, and Hardy said he was led to the educational field because of his passion for people.
“I had a bursary to study engineering, but then I realised I loved people, and engineering was not going to allow me to use that passion for people,” said Hardy.
He enrolled at the Johannesburg College of Education to study teaching, and then joined Fourways High School as a teacher. However, because he and his wife were both teachers, Hardy said they realised in order for them to reach their financial goals they would have to teach abroad.
“We left for China and taught there at an international school for four years; and then in Qatar at another international school for six years,” he said, adding that it was only at the American school in Qatar that teaching morphed from a job into a career he was passionate about.
He said the school in Qatar pushed the borders on cutting-edge education. “I was a maths teacher, but I was very involved in studies on how children learn,” he said.
This very experience is one that has positioned Hardy in his vision for Crawford College. “We had our first staff conference recently and I said to the teachers that at this school, we have to understand that we are building people who going to be very important to the country in the future,” he said.
He acknowledged that it was a different philosophy to that of teaching, and that it put a lot more responsibility on the teacher because “you have to consider the end point of these kids, and this isn’t what they teach you at university”.
While he had introduced a new approach, Hardy said he wanted to maintain the culture of excellence at the school.
“The learners spend a lot of their time here, so it will benefit them if the environment they are in, is one with a culture of succeeding and excellence,” he said, adding that they boast a catchphrase that says “it’s cool to do well in this school”.
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