Leila Vernalls
"So, what makes teaching worthwhile? Especially when the media portrays teaching as one of the most horrible jobs that one could have at the moment. Why do we keep turning up everything do, and why do I keep doing what I do? The simple answer is I actually love being around students and I love teaching them things. I get so excited when they get excited about being successful in class and I think I'm very lucky and some days I think how am I so lucky that this is my job. Particularly this year I'm on a full Visual Arts load and I am just all day teaching students about the Visual Arts which is my true passion and I absolutely love it. I get to see a side of students that some of the other teachers in general subjects don't get to see, particularly the more challenging, complex students, because when they come from a Maths class or an English class into a Visual Arts class it's a totally different context and they just thoroughly engage with what we are doing and can sit there and get in a zone and be creative. I have had a few people say to me 'how do you find such-and-such in your class, what are they like in Art?' and I say 'they are doing really well, they sit there and do their sculpture, fully engaged'. They are gobsmacked. One particularly challenging student has an obsession with drawing gorillas and he'll come in and find what he wants to do and sit there and focus for a full hour ten and when I tell them 'ok guys it's time to pack up' he will just look at me in disbelief that an entire lesson has past. That is something that I'm truly passionate about and just makes me love going to work each day. I guess I have been lucky also that I have taught a few different subject areas and have taught Food Studies as well for nine years and I loved that subject because it was skills for life and the kids could see the sense in it that this was something that you had to have to live. The better your food tastes, the happier we all are! Another story to go with that is probably one of my biggest highlights for Food Studies was that I had a really challenging boy who was quite hard to have in a theory room, but get him into a practical class he just absolutely loved it. He wanted to make a Lava Cake. I explained, it's all about timing, the temperate has to be exact, you have to get the time perfect with one mintute over and the whole thing is going to be not lava, the whole thing could fall apart. It's hard, you have to practise. So, he would come back at lunch time and practise. I would have teachers walk past and go 'oh what's such-and-such done? He's in trouble?' I'd just say 'oh no, he's actually coming back because he wants to practise his desert for his assessment'. They couldn't believe it. So he would come back everyday for a week and I finally had to say 'mate I'm sick of lava cakes, maybe we just need to give up' and it was that day that he nailed it and it came out and it was just perfect. So that was I really, really special moment."