In 1975 I began my career as a teacher. In a few short weeks that career will come to an end.
I like to think of my career as a very fortunate one. I have taught in some wonderful schools, taught some amazing children and worked with many memorable colleagues.
I have lived in the city and the country.
In 1976 my young family and I moved to a small country town in the south of the state.
It was in this school that I began my life long love of drama and performance.
I wrote two short musicals while I was there. As we didn’t have a music teacher in those days I ‘borrowed’ the melodies from known songs. That way I didn’t have to reach the kids the songs but rather only apply the lyrics to the known melodies.
We didn’t have a theatre to perform in so we were fortunate to be given the use of an old disused picture theatre where, once we cleaned it up and chased out the rats we were able to perform two shows. Added to that I borrowed some lights and props from the local Theatre group, enlisted people in the community who could play music for me and away we went. Instant musical. Fun fun fun.
The other proud thing I did while I was working in the bush was to set up an excursion/camping trip for the older kids. As it was an isolated community many kids didn’t get out of town very often so we took them on a trip for six days five nights through Victoria to our south. For many kids I realised that this was one of the few good things they would remember about school.
From there we moved back to our home territory and I gained a spot at a brand new high school. This was a bit like the wild west for a while. We had little resources and a lot of kids who resented being there.
Again we found that a way of uniting the school was to put on a show. We had a great music teacher and in the third year I was there we put on a musical that I had written. It was successful and so began our yearly shows. In 1989 we performed another show of mine called Charming. This one had taken a year to write and I had the help of another drama teacher at the school at the time who was a wonderful support and as keen as I was to see the show happen. That was probably the best show I did as a spectacle at any rate. We gave a lot of kids a great experience to remember, plus we made a few dollars as well. Our leading man, in the shows we did went on to be and still is a successful performer in stage shows throughout Australia.
In 1995 I moved to my present school a totally different teaching and learning environment. I have been in this school for the past 19 years. It is a school that caters for academically gifted children.
In this school I have taught drama and English. I have loved my time there and it is where I shall finish my career.
In this school as a drama teacher in particular I have been given the opportunity to write a lot of performance pieces over the years.
I love the process of performance. How you get from words on a page to an actual performance. It is at times the most exciting of processes. Sometimes it is not much more than trying something out to see what happens. In fact that is one of my favourite sayings to students when they ask me about an idea, I say to them: ‘Give it a go, see what happens.’
So one part of my story is my teaching career. It has been a wonderful time for me. I have been given opportunities to do things most teachers never do, I have been involved in whole school projects and my basic philosophy of education is that learning is about opportunity. Grasp it when it comes your way, you never know where it is going to lead you. Discovering the process of learning is a wonderful path to travel on. I have no regrets.
Morpethroad 