School bell tolls for the last time for retiring Alice Springs principal after 38 years of teaching
AFTER 38 years of teaching with the NT education department, school principal Tony Collins is leaving school for the day for the very last time
Centralian Advocate
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SEEING students’ accomplishments outside of school is something Centralian Senior College retiring principal Tony Collins loves about his job.
After 38 years of teaching for the NT education department, with 34 of those years in Alice Springs teaching at various schools, Mr Collins is getting ready to leave school for the day for the very last time.
“A continuing highlight is when you meet students outside of school and often they’ve had families, and hearing about what they’ve gone on to,” Mr Collins said, who has been principal at the school for the past five years.
“That long period that I’ve been involved in education, to see the long term results or effects of that education that you’ve played a small part of.”
Mr Collins started teaching in 1982 at Darwin Highschool as a physics and maths teacher, the days of “shorts and long white socks”.
He said growing the Australian languages program, where students learn Indigenous languages, mainly Arrente, was a memorable career highlight.
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When he first started teaching it was mostly concentrated on learning academic subjects like physics and math, but now students have access to a range of social and emotional learning programs to meet their wellbeing needs.
“We often say if you haven’t got students feeling good about being in school and feeling good about themselves you can forget about the academic learning,” Mr Collins said.
“The other big change would be the technology. Pretty well all our students have individual laptops, and part of what we do here at Centralian Senior College as students move towards young adults behaviours is being able to manage that responsibly.
“Nowadays you can gain credit for your learning in a much more flexible way that it’s not just the classroom learning that you’re getting credit for, but also for learning in your best courses, credit for learning the things you’re doing the community.
“That has certainly been a change from the traditional subject based classroom learning and curriculum.”
To aspiring teachers, he said the Territory was a great and rewarding place for work.
He said he enjoyed the school’s “inclusiveness” and the diverse student populations.
“You get offered a wide range of opportunities, often much earlier in your career.”
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