Deputy principal shows students it’s OK to be brave

It's not every day you get a $7500 haircut.

Queen’s High School deputy principal Stephanie Ashton yesterday shaved her hair to help raise funds for the World Vision 40-Hour Challenge.

"I said if we raised $5500 I would get my head shaved ... we actually fundraised $7500."

Queen’s High School deputy principal Stephanie Ashton after she received a hair cut at assembly in front of pupils (from left) Sienna Jamieson, Aiesha Goswami, Charly Wood, Heather Lawrence, Abby Newell and Micaela Sumner, and World Vision South Island youth ambassador Taine Hewetson, as well as the rest of the school. PHOTOS: PETER MCINTOSH

She said the fresh cut felt a bit "breezy", but it was not too bad and she was not worried about sporting the new look.

She was brought up to be resilient and wanted her students to know that "our identity is inside and its not actually about how we look".

"I think we’re in a society now where image is really important and girls don’t feel confident to do things that are hard.

"What I wanted to show the girls was that while I'm the deputy principal and a person of my word, the other thing is I'm actually OK at doing brave things and I want our girls to be brave."

Ms Ashton before her close shave.

The pupils cheered Ms Ashton on as she got her head shaved.

In addition to Ms Ashton shaving her hair, either a prefect, staff member or a group of pupils also completed tasks such as the ice bucket challenge for every $250 collected.

World Vision South Island youth ambassador Taine Hewetson said the money raised would go towards helping farmers in Timor-Leste learn techniques to regrow trees after being affected by catastrophic floods and landslides.