An experienced classroom teacher, not a tutoring script.

Teaching, then coaching, then teaching again

I grew up in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, in a household where sport, music, public speaking and debating all mattered. I competed in gymnastics to Level 10, and then spent years coaching it, working with athletes who went on to become state champions before I moved into secondary teaching.

Coaching taught me something that has shaped every lesson since. You do not improve an athlete by telling them to try harder, and you do not improve a student by telling them to write better essays. You identify exactly what needs to change, teach the correct technique explicitly, give feedback that is specific enough to act on, and then practise it until the person can perform it on their own, under pressure, without being reminded.

In the classroom that means I am interested in the sentence that did not quite work, the paragraph that described instead of evaluated, and the question the student misread. That is where the marks are.

What I teach and why

My subjects are Legal Studies, Studies of Religion, Commerce and Business Studies, and HSIE more broadly across Years 7 to 12. They are subjects where knowledge alone is never enough. A student has to take contested material, form a judgement, support it with evidence and communicate it clearly enough that a marker reading their two hundredth paper of the day can see the argument immediately.

Over 18 years I have taught a great many students into Band 5 and Band 6, and former students are now working in law, medicine, engineering and a wide range of other professions. What they had in common was not natural talent for essay writing. It was a technique they had been taught deliberately and practised properly.

I hold high expectations and I say so plainly. Teenagers respond well to being taken seriously, being told the truth about their work, and being shown exactly how to fix it. Sessions are demanding and, students tell me, genuinely enjoyable.