Hats off to dedicated Cairns educator
YEARS of hard work have paid off for a Cairns high school teacher who was recently formally recognised with a state award, but she says she isn’t the real winner.
Cairns State High School teacher Vanessa Johnson was the recipient of Queensland Education’s Showcase Award for Excellence in Teaching for the Far North Queensland region.
She was nominated for the award by principal Chris Zilm out of happiness for a previous major achievement – Ms Johnson’s recent accreditation in becoming a nationally recognised Highly Accomplished Teacher.
And to be accredited as a Highly Accomplished Teacher Ms Johnson was required to demonstrate she met 37 professional standards across the three domains of professional knowledge, professional practice and professional engagement in a process she described as “harder than a uni degree”.
“It was three years of hard work,” Ms Johnson said.
“It was all about student outcomes. It’s about what you do at school to impact on students and on other teachers. To help build capacity in other teachers who will then have an impact on other students as well.
“So my students knew I was going for this over all these years and they would keep asking ‘did you get it miss?’
“I felt to symbolise the occasion for them and for me I would get something made and that’s where this hat from Hayley Gillespie comes in, short for Highly Accomplished Teacher.
“The students are the biggest winners because these programs mean they’ve got quality teachers staying in classrooms.”
The former nurse and midwife made the transition into teaching about nine years ago and moved from Freshwater State School to CSHS as a Year 7 co-ordinator.