“If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children.”
I began my education career in 1999, when I completed a Bachelor of Education at the University of Melbourne. Over the next couple of years, I taught in a number of schools, firstly on placement and then contracted as a teacher of English, History and Literature in years 7-12. Following this, I spent a decade working at the Distance Education Centre Victoria, Australia's largest provider of primary and secondary school distance education. It was at the DECV that I honed my skills in writing curriculum materials, with all courses consisting of instructions that had to be accessible for students with a broad range of experience and expertise in the subject area. Not only did this give me an appreciation of the importance of well-written curriculum materials, but I had the opportunity to work on a number of cutting-edge projects, including the Centre of Excellence project (2001), the Boys Education Lighthouse Scheme (2004), Do-It-Yourself English (2005-2009), and the development of two online-only modules for the Certificate in Business (VET in Schools) course which I created alongside distance educators from around Australia in 2009.
From 2004-present, I have sought opportunities that have allowed me to use my writing skills to develop educational content for national education providers. I have written more than ten text book chapters for Jacaranda's award-winning History Alive and English Alive series; I have written book reviews, to be used by Year 12 English students in preparing for their exams, for the Education section of the Herald Sun; and I have created more than 100 online resources for ABC Splash, an initiative of the Australian Broadcasting Association and Education Services Australia. Working with such large and well-regarded educational institutions as Jacaranda (a division of John Wiley and Sons Australia) and Education Services Australia has given me the opportunity to work with some of the best teachers and writers about education in the business; these are opportunities that I am very grateful for. If you would like to see a sample of my work, you can download one chapter from Jacaranda's English Alive series entitled 'Alive with Spies'. I really enjoyed writing this chapter, particularly when they allowed me to include a section of my espionage novel 'Sleeper'. To view and download the chapter at the publisher's website, click here.
In 2010, I co-founded Comics Go Global, an online collaborative Arts/Literacy unit that consists of seven weeks of content and designed to be run using asynchronous and synchronous tools including discussion boards and Skype/Google Hangouts. My co-founders were Antoine Toniolo and Dr Michael Bitz. The results were extremely successful, with more than 130 students having 'graduated' from the program at the time of writing. We, and our students, also had the pleasure of presenting our findings at a number of conferences including the Royal Geographic Society, where we spoke to academics around the world about teaching 'beyond borders'.
At the beginning of 2014, I was employed by Deakin University as a casual academic. In Trimester 1, I had the pleasure of team-teaching the Visual Narrative unit with Antoine Toniolo, an eleven week course that looked at the academic and practical elements of designing children's picture books and graphic novels; the students' work was extremely encouraging, and demonstrated how rich these forms of storytelling can be. In trimester 3, I was the acting Unit Chair, and tutor, for students undertaking Teach For Australia's English method, where I delivered my course content in a series of 'intensive' one-day workshops, as well as online. I continued to work as a tutor in English Method, and the core subjects within the Master of Teaching, throughout 2015, and enjoyed attempting to establish a Community of Inquiry at tertiary level.
Because of my experience in education and writing over the last decade and a half, I continue to be sought after for presenting talks to primary and high school students about writing for print, e-books, transmedia and now games.