Patience Hawker

Patience Hawker (28 March 1900 – 9 August 1994) was a teacher who with Mabel Hardy co-founded Stawell School for girls in South Australia.

Patience Constance Joan Hawker was a granddaughter of George Charles Hawker (1818–1895) and Elizabeth "Bessie" Hawker née Seymour ( –1901), and daughter of Edward William Hawker MHA (1850–1940) and Mary Letitia Hawker née Stawell (1870–1938). The family had a property and residence at East Bungaree, where they were closely associated with the Wachenappee people. Patience was educated at home, then boarded at Yoothamurra school in Glenelg, followed by the Geelong Grammar School, then Frensham School at Mittagong, New South Wales. She gained her BA at Bedford College, University of London, then returned to the family home "Wachenappee" in Stirling, near the Mount Lofty Railway station (later named "Olivet House"). In 1925 she was employed at Woodlands Girls Grammar School in Glenelg, South Australia, where she found a friend in second mistress Mabel Hardy, with whom she shared ideas about teaching. But she was not happy with the rather spartan staff accommodation and after a discussion with headmistress Dora Gillam left at the end of the year. She served for a few months at Girton School, then received a note from Mabel Hardy, who was enjoying a year in England and on the Continent, proposing a partnership to found a girls' school in the Adelaide Hills.

Fired with enthusiasm, Patience purchased "Arthur's Seat" a large bungalow on 90 acres (36 ha) near the summit of Mount Lofty and overlooking the Adelaide Plains. It was largely financed with a loan from her mother, and the school was named in her honour, she having been born Mary Stawell. A company, Stawell School Ltd., was incorporated on 21 December 1926 with Patience Hawker as Managing Director. The two women made the mansion their residence, with rooms for boarders, and had classrooms built away from the residence. They modelled Stawell School on her happy memories of Frensham, which had so inspired Patience. Part of their philosophy of teaching was Helen Parkhurst's Dalton system which gives the student a great deal of control over her own work, where the teacher is a resource and adviser rather than a lecturer, and students are encouraged to aid one another's learning.

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