Posted Friday 16 May 2008

Shelley currently works at Casuarina Senior College, Northern Territory and has been the AMC State Director for the Northern Territory since 2007. This is a profile on herself which Shelley wrote in 2008.

I was born (in Laidley, QLD) on a little dairy farm in Coominya in 1976 into a wonderful family of six. I won’t bore you with the extensive list of places throughout Queensland I have lived before leaving secondary school (and come to think of it after as well), but I will give you a glimpse. There were times when I played for hours in the Nicolson River that passes through the aboriginal community of Doomadgee whilst my Mother taught at the school and my father was the farm overseer. Many weekends were filled with camping especially in Cape York when we lived at Kowanyama. But the most favourable memories are the many, many hours of my childhood soaked up with riding horses. My father bred trotting horses (pacers) during my earlier years and between our beef cattle and anyone who needed help we spent exciting weekends riding for enjoyment or mustering in the mountains of the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane: sometimes I think the horses knew more about cattle psychology than I ever did.

So where does a country girl who for part of her childhood lived in remote Queensland communities with a nomadic educational experience get her love of mathematics? I remember counting and classifying wherever I could. This isn’t a tale of rose lined pathways. As a result of the varied educational experiences, I endured periods of difficulty at school and know what it feels like to be the bottom of the class and very frustrated wondering why I just didn’t get it. Once I got the hang of Maths and Science in Senior School, I decided that I wanted to be a Secondary Mathematics and Physics teacher to help students with difficulty who may not otherwise have been able to achieve success in these areas.

I was adamant that I needed life experience before going from the education system as a student then to teacher. So I decided to pursue an alternate profession before becoming a teacher. I did something quite unexpected at the risk of disappointing my family and as I found out later, my school: I joined the Australian Army in 1995 and learnt the trade of Avionic Technician. I worked on Iroquois (Bell 205) and Kiowa (Bell 206) helicopters for a total of six years full time service including a three month deployment in a peace keeping mission on Bougainville. I am still in the army reserve and in hind sight I can see how this trade further developed my foundational knowledge and application of both mathematics and physics. For example I learnt about phasors through practical application of a "flux capacitor" in the tail boom of an Iroquois (Bell 205) Helicopter before I played with the mathematical analysis and other applications of this concept. At university, I developed a passion for mathematical modelling and I would love to do something more with this one day in the future.

Whilst at university, I changed my degree several times as I learnt about myself and felt myself grow. I began studying to become a primary school teacher in 2000. I saw myself as becoming a mathematics specialist in the primary teaching area. Hence, in every elective I studied mathematics or information technology. Soon I came upon a conflict of subjects and every second year maths subject clashed with primary education core subjects. Being forced to choose, I made the difficult decision to change from a primary to secondary teaching degree. I know that my identity as a teacher, even though I teach senior secondary, was formulated in those early years at university with emphasis on individual learning journeys, educational philosophies and a reflective teaching practice.

My love of learning and helping others to learn has been the focus of my professional energies. I have exposed myself to as much professional development whenever I can. I often feel dwarfed by my neophyte knowledge and wonder if I will ever have a full grasp in my lifetime. Not only does there seem a deep level of intricacy and variability over how any one mathematical concept might be developed but individual learners come with different learning styles, learning experiences, potential misconceptions and an extensive range of strengths to harness. Which combination works with which student/cohort/subject? This is before I think about myself as a person who has her own strengths and weaknesses and the effects this has on everything I have just mentioned.

It is my aspiration as a classroom teacher of mathematics to support and encourage each student to have experiences of challenged success. The meaning of challenged success obviously varies in each individual case, I often battle with students who feel they "just don’t get Maths/algebra etc". I believe, however, that mathematics is for all and that every person is capable of success given the right time and support.

To me, mathematics has become a good friend who likes to be colour co-ordinated and even though on the surface at times she is cold, calculated and inflexible, underneath she is creative, elaborate and wise beyond recognition.

Shelley
April 2008