Teach for Australia associate wins Rhodes scholarship

Teach for Australia, the innovative scheme which fast-tracks talented graduates into teaching roles in needy schools, has produced a Rhodes scholar.

Gia-Yen Luong, a 2019 Rhodes scholar, is a Teach for Australia alumnus.

In today’s Higher Ed Daily Brief: Rhodes rejoicing. indigenous health study

Recognition for Teach for Australia

Teach for Australia, the innovative scheme which fast-tracks talented non-teaching graduates into teaching roles in needy schools, has produced a Rhodes scholar and will go to Oxford next year.

Previously Gia-Yen Luong, a UNSW science and law graduate, won a highly competitive position as a Teach for Australia associate and went straight into the classroom. As part of the Teach for Australia requirements, she also earned her master of secondary teaching at Deakin University.

Ms Luong, who is now teaching at Palmerston College in Darwin, plans to do a master of science in comparative and international education at Oxford. Her ambition is to return to Australia and one day be a school principal and, ultimately, a leader in education policy.

“When the announcement was made I was completely dumbfounded. It only started to feel real when I returned to Darwin and told my students,” Ms Luong said. “Their excitement and joy has been so contagious, and they’ve really helped me see the scope of this achievement.”

Others who are rejoicing include the UNSW law school, which has now produced six Rhodes scholars since 2013, Deakin University (for whom Ms Luong is its first ever Rhodes scholar), and the Teach for Australia program whose aim to select the very best, high potential young people for future leadership roles in education. Ms Luong is proof they are succeeding.

“I absolutely love teaching and I believe that it is my vehicle for creating social change,” said Ms Luong, whose family is from Vietnam, and who was the first in her family to go to university. “I will use what I learn at Oxford University to inform my practice and the change that I will create as a school leader later in my career.”

First of its kind

Australian National University researchers are launching a first of its kind health study of indigenous adults, to investigate whether identity, cultural participation and knowledge is linked to better health outcomes.

“For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people this concept is intuitive,” said researcher Ray Lovett from the ANU College of Health and Medicine, who is leading the study. “We know if we maintain a connection to our country, to our languages, to strong family and kinship networks that it is good for us, but we need the data.”

Associate Professor Lovett said that for him, working on the study was personal. “I’m a product of the stolen generations — my grandmother was taken. This has had traumatic impacts within my own extended family,” he said.

There was a “mistaken perception in Australia that being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander is the cause of ill health”, he said.