State’s best teachers to be crowned tonight
These teachers at three Logan high schools will find out if they are the best in the state when this year’s prestigious TEACHX awards are announced tonight in Brisbane.
Logan
Don't miss out on the headlines from Logan. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Teachers at three Logan high schools will find out tonight if they are the best in the state.
Marsden, Mable Park and John Paul College high schools, have finalists in this year’s prestigious TEACHX awards, which will be announced tonight in Brisbane.
Marsden State High teachers Ping Ding, Cameron Lynch and Donald Cameron are finalists along with Mabel Park teachers Margaret Sherrington, Sophie Gruhl and Gavin Jones.
John Paul College teacher Michael King has been nominated in the Excellence in Beginning to Teach section.
Outstanding Contribution to Teaching
Marsden’s Ms Ding was nominated for the Outstanding Contribution to Teaching award.
Ms Ding grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China and has created one of Queensland’s largest school Chinese language departments.
After leaving school at 16 she was allocated by the government to work in a public bathhouse. Five years later, in 1978, she and a whole generation of Chinese citizens were allowed to apply for university for the first time in a decade.
“For us it was a really rare opportunity. We took all of [the] opportunity to study everything.
The value of education and the opportunities it provided never left her, and she became a teacher in 1983 and to this year’s awards.
In 1995, after living in separate countries from her husband for five years, she was able to follow him to Australia. In her new home, language was the first barrier she had to
overcome. In a bridging course at QUT she graduated top of her class.
After carrying out her teaching prac at Marsden State High School, she went on to work at the school.
NOMINEES
John Alloway, Ignatius Park College
John Aloizos, Yeronga State High School
Ping Ding, Marsden State High School
Pearl Donovan, Queensland Academies Health Sciences Campus
Dell Rathbone, West Moreton Anglican College
Outstanding Contribution to School Community
Mabel Park State High School’s Margaret Sherrington was nominated for the Outstanding Contribution to School Community
The Logan teacher has powerful and profound connections with her students and their multicultural communities.
Three decades after she started teaching at Mabel Park State High School, Ms Sherrington is now teaching the grandchildren of students she once taught.
She has made contributions to most of the extra-curricular events at the school including awards nights, the senior formal, Year 12 graduation, the Multicultural Night, fundraising barbecues, the Samoa Tour, and the school’s homework club.
She also helped set up a Multicultural Performance Festival for cultural dances.
This also built relationships with parents, some of whom had negative or no schooling experiences.
Nearly 1000 community members now attend the MPF and the powerful event is often the first touchpoint for parents, who come from more than 60 cultural backgrounds.
She has played an important role in the school’s LEAD program, which helps students gain entry to Griffith University. Some are the first in their families to attend university.
Her profound connection with pupils and their communities was evident when a fire ripped through the home of one of the former students, killing her and 10 others.
Mrs Sherrington helped former school captain Annamaria Taufa during her year 12 at Mabel Park High in 2005. She even became godmother to Ms Taufa’s daughter.
The former school captain had personal challenges in Year 12 but went on to study Law at university before the tragic fire which killed her and her baby daughters.
Mrs Sherrington walked in grief alongside the family and Pacific Islander communities – praying, crying and mourning with them.
Her colleagues said the place she holds in the Logan community, due to her relationships like this, “cannot be measured, cannot be put in words or even explained, it can only be felt”.
NOMINEES
Chantelle Amson, Nambour Special School
Ron Armstrong, The Cathedral College
Carly Bell, Clermont State High School
Cathy Nixon, Cairns West State School
Margaret Sherrington, Mabel Park State High School
Excellence in Beginning to Teach
John Paul College’s Michael King has been nominated for Excellence in Beginning to Teach
Michael King, a former musician turned teacher at John Paul College (JPC), was a Prep Learning Assistant at John Paul College for seven years before becoming a Year 1 teacher.
He has already been recognised for his outstanding work with a regional Queensland Training Award in 2015, when he was studying a Diploma in Community Services in Education and Care.
Mr King noticed when his son was in the early years of primary school that there weren’t many male teachers.
He started out as a parent helper when his son was in Prep, before becoming a Learning Assistant and last year became a teacher.
“Children come from a variety of family situations and to be able to be a positive male role model for young children was a shining light for me,” Mr King said.
“It would be wonderful to see more males in early childhood to provide a balance for students and an opportunity to have a male influence in building strong relationships.
“I think that was another passion that drove me when I was going to university – I was one of only a few males studying early childhood,” he said.
Mr King, who started studying teaching in his 40s, led the way suggesting weekly professional development meetings, welcome packs and a mentoring system.
This year, Mr King and the college’s school counsellor – delivered a heart-warming rendition of What a Wonderful World, posted on the college’s social media pages, helping to lift the spirits of the school.
Mabel Park State High School’s Sophie Gruhl has been nominated for Excellence in Beginning to Teach
Sophie Gruhl had been teaching for only a few months when a student asked her a question she still finds heartbreaking.
“She asked, ‘Why are you teaching here?’ And I just looked her and said, ‘What do you mean?’, and she said ‘You should be at a rich school and not with us’.”
It was a moment that made Miss Gruhl realise just how low her students’ self-esteem was, and she has made an extraordinary effort to raise their expectations ever since.
Over the past 18 months, the Mabel Park State High School teacher and Netball Excellence Coach has taken the school’s first Indigenous netball team to a tournament and has organised a second-hand shoe drive with her local gym through which she obtained more than 50 pairs of high-quality shoes for students to play in.
She organised a Year 12 Big Day Out in a successful attempt to increase attendance and decrease truancy. She also taught Muslim students how to float in a lake for the first time, managed a girls’ Metropolitan East Rugby League team and organised the Year 9 celebration evening.
She’s also been appointed the school’s Year 11 and 12 Coordinator after she showed an exceptional grasp for differentiating student learning and an ability to build strong relationships with students.
The science, mathematics, digital technologies and health and physical education teacher is also a GEMS (Girls Excelling in Maths and Science) Leader and was appointed a Curriculum Leader for the school’s inaugural Year 9 iMPact class.
When COVID-19 hit and the school community ran out of hand sanitiser, Miss Gruhl innovatively planned consecutive science lessons to teach her students about how germs spread and followed up with a practical lesson making hand sanitiser.
The students’ hand sanitiser was then shared with the entire school and news of the innovative lesson saw Education Queensland International publish an article.
NOMINEES
Peita Bates, Maryborough State High School
Alexandra Calligaris, Maroochydore State High School
Matalena Daniells, Centenary State High School
Sophie Gruhl, Mabel Park State High School
Michael King, John Paul College
Innovation in Teaching
Mabel Park State High School teacher Gavin Jones has been nominated for Innovation in Teaching
The first Queensland students to undertake a drone-piloting course have participated in a World of Drones event and learned from police how to map out crime scenes, all thanks to Mabel Park State High School teacher Gavin Jones.
Mr Jones introduced a Certificate III in Visual Arts program and was then asked to introduce the remote pilot course.
The teacher, who had obtained a commercial pilot’s licence when taking long service leave, was keen to combine his two passions.
Since then, he has been constantly tweaking the drone course and coming up with scenarios for students to learn the applications of drone technology and what a pilot must think about when flying.
Mr Jones wants to provide real-world knowledge and has Queensland police visit the school to show how they use drones to map out crime scenes.
Students have participated in the World of Drones event where they flew pens to waiting dignitaries.
“When they’re flying, I go over and have a talk to them. That’s the good thing about the program, we’re all spread out over the oval, a small group of 16.
“I can check in on individual students,” he said.
The technology has been highlighted as one of the reasons the school’s enrolment figures have doubled in just four years.
Every student enrolled in the school’s Certificate III in Aviation (Remote Pilot – Visual Line of Sight) course, introduced by teacher Gavin Jones, has obtained a qualification.
Mr Jones, who comes from a family of teachers, has taught at MPSHS since graduating from his teacher education program 32 years ago.
He hopes to spark a passion for flying in his students and one has already gone on to enrol in a Bachelor of Aviation at Griffith University.
Recently, he was able to arrange for eight students to obtain their Remote Pilot Licence through the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
Marsden State High School (MSHS) Business, IT and HPE teacher Cameron Lynch has been nominated for Innovation in Technology
Electronic Sports, known as Esports, is a growing billion-dollar industry taking off around the world and Marsden State High was one of the first schools in Queensland to introduce it.
Teacher Cameron Lynch, who is also a sports coach at Marsden, has been using his skills to introduce the ground-breaking industry at his school.
“Kids problem-solve, they communicate, they collaborate – they do all of these things online with their gaming without even knowing that they’re doing it. Helping them to unlock those skills – that’s a life skill that can help them get a job somewhere else,” Mr Lynch said.
He has built links with local companies XP Sports and Federation of United School Esports, which run Esports tournaments, as well as with The University of Queensland and the Queensland University of Technology.
These partnerships give Marsden students links to real-world knowledge and provide pathways to further study or employment.
Mr Lynch said participation in Esports had also grown student confidence.
“When they speak, people listen and their opinion is valued and that has been a massive thing for the confidence of some of our kids,” he said.
Student-led developments have seen Esports grow at the school to include learning how to
Mr Lynch has worked with the Queensland Department of Education and a teacher at Forest Lake State High School to pilot a Digital Technologies curriculum that contains Esports.
He is also developing applications for Business and HPE subjects, and beyond.
NOMINEES
Amy Freeman, Mackay District Special School
Gavin Jones, Mabel Park State High School
Cameron Lynch, Marsden State High School
Brett Murphy, Belgian Gardens State School
Christopher Pacey, St Patrick's College, Townsville
Excellent Leadership in Teaching and Learning
Marsden State High School’s Donald Cameron has been nominated for Excellent Leadership in Teaching and Learning
Mindfulness and lessons from neuroscience and yoga are helping to retain more than 95 per cent of early career teachers at Marsden State High, thanks to teacher Donald Cameron.
Mr Cameron has been credited with driving transformational change in the school’s teaching and learning culture.
As Marsden State High’s Head of Department –Teaching and Learning, Mr Cameron oversees the training and mentoring of more than 70 early career teachers.
In 2019, he created the FOCUS team of 25 highly dedicated teachers who work to improve staff development and performance.
Mindfulness is a big component of Mr Cameron’s teachings and yoga classes, which he has introduced and have become very popular with staff.
He tells beginner teachers that they can’t always control what happens in the classroom but they can control their actions.
In his first year of teaching, the educator was full of excitement – he felt his students would be waiting for him to pass on his knowledge.
“That was the exact opposite of what happened. I walked in and I had no control over what was happening. I was trying to put across things that I thought were really interesting, but the
students were like, ‘Are you from another planet?’.”
Mr Cameron graduated with a degree in environmental science and then decided to complete a postgraduate qualification in teaching.
Thirty years on, he is still studying how to improve his teaching.
He notes that while attention is often focussed on the retention of beginner teachers, he is just as invested in growing the capabilities of mid-career and later-career teachers.
He set up the Teaching Framework at Marsden State High School which includes the Australian Professional standards for teachers and the school’s key teaching priorities.
One key priority for retention of learning involves triggering the “error alarm’ in your brain.
The Teaching Framework has led to Mr Cameron’s work on a Student Framework where his goal is not for students to learn a subject but to learn the art of learning.
For students to develop determination through improved efficacy, he identified three contributing factors – their teacher, their peers and their parents.
NOMINEES
Donald Cameron, Marsden State High School
Susan Dalton, Miami State High School
Keith Graham, Rochedale State School
Ben Habermehl, Yeronga State High School
Meredith Wenta, Kirwan State High School
The winners of the Queensland College of Teachers TEACHX Awards, will be announced at a virtual awards ceremony tonight.
They are the only Queensland education awards that recognise teachers from all schooling sectors and the early childhood sector, and across all subjects.
Finalists were chosen from a record number of 400 nominations across six categories – a 60 per cent increase on last year’s number of nominations, which was also a record.
There were 74 teachers who were shortlisted, for their excellence inside and outside the classroom.
on World Teachers’ Day, October 30.
QCT TEACHX AWARDS 2020 FINALIST LIST
Outstanding Contribution to Teaching
John Alloway, Ignatius Park College
John Aloizos, Yeronga State High School
Ping Ding, Marsden State High School
Pearl Donovan, Queensland Academies Health Sciences Campus
Dell Rathbone, West Moreton Anglican College
Outstanding Contribution to School Community
Chantelle Amson, Nambour Special School
Ron Armstrong, The Cathedral College
Carly Bell, Clermont State High School
Cathy Nixon, Cairns West State School
Margaret Sherrington, Mabel Park State High School
Excellence in Beginning to Teach
Peita Bates, Maryborough State High School
Alexandra Calligaris, Maroochydore State High School
Matalena Daniells, Centenary State High School
Sophie Gruhl, Mabel Park State High School
Michael King, John Paul College
Excellence in Teaching
Jodi Audoss, Silkstone State School
Song Huang, Yeronga State High School
Cecilia Kovacic, Maryborough State High School
Matthew Lourigan, Loreto College
Joel Speranza, Ormiston College
Innovation in Teaching
Amy Freeman, Mackay District Special School
Gavin Jones, Mabel Park State High School
Cameron Lynch, Marsden State High School
Brett Murphy, Belgian Gardens State School
Christopher Pacey, St Patrick’s College, Townsville
Excellent Leadership in Teaching and Learning
Donald Cameron, Marsden State High School
Susan Dalton, Miami State High School
Keith Graham, Rochedale State School
Ben Habermehl, Yeronga State High School
Meredith Wenta, Kirwan State High School