After nine years as principal, Friday will be Bec Stone’s last day at Otford Public School and there are two things she will really miss in retirement.
“The kids and the environment,” she said.
“The thing about a small school – we always use the tagline, ‘small school, big heart’ – the kids are so well known. The connection of being in a small tribe means that we can stay on top of what their needs are, what their potential is and encourage them, and challenge them to be the best that they can be.”
Otford has just two classes – Kindy to Year 2 and Years 3 to 6 – and a total of 42 children.
“We tend to get a lot of kids who come from other local schools that need the environment of the small school for that kind of support,” Bec said.
How Buddy Reading inspired career change
Bec took an unusual path, only coming to teaching at age 35. She originally studied a Bachelor of Science at Macquarie Uni then worked in a variety of jobs, including as a Qantas flight attendant, a travel agent and at a pharmaceutical company.
“I've done lots of different things,” she said. “When my son started school, I used to help out in the classroom just as a parent helper. And I just thought, 'Wow, this is the coolest.'
“I worked with a particular boy for about six months, just doing Buddy Reading, and seeing the success and changes in his abilities was fascinating.”
It reawakened her interest in biological psychology, in learning about senses and brain development.
“So I worked part-time and did a two-year degree in one year. It was the best thing I ever did, I always said teaching was the culmination of apprenticeship of lots of different jobs that I'd had prior.”
Bec worked at schools across the Illawarra, including at Coledale, Bulli and Bellambi ("I loved, loved being there…more so in a low-socioeconomic school, you're given a chance to really help”).
In 2016, she started at Otford, on the same day as school administrative manager Nicole Kludass.
“I hadn't been a principal and she hadn't been a school admin. We started together and had a great nine years,” Bec said.
“I love designing curriculum. I love looking at ways to put units of work together that are really engaging for the kids. And being a teaching principal gives you that opportunity. Not only do you get to lead others and share professional learning with others, but you still get really involved at the class level, in teaching with the kids. So for me, that's the reason I stayed nine years.”
STEM inspired studies
Not long after the pandemic began in 2020, a parent who was an epidemiologist warned Bec we would be in and out of lockdown for years. This prompted her to start on her third degree: a Master of Education in STEM.
Today, after 25 years in teaching, Bec is most proud to have shared her love of science, technology, engineering and maths with both students and other teachers.
In recognition of this passion, Wednesday, July 3 was ‘Dress Up like Mrs Stone Day’ at Otford Public School and Bec had a “lovely surprise” when children arrived in various guises, including astronauts, a paleontologist and a dinosaur, some mad scientists and mathematicians, Mrs Fixit and a bushfire brigade captain.
“We've been a STEM-based school and we've been really at the forefront of future-focused learning,” Bec said.
“Last year we were part of a Mars in Space program with the Andy Hargreaves Foundation and the Australian Space Academy. There were about 1200 [schools] that applied for it and we were one of 30 across Australia that were chosen.
“We worked really closely with other people in the community because we were designing an agriculture biodome on Mars using 3D printing.”
This included lessons on growing plants at Gilly’s Kitchen Garden across the road from the school.
“We looked at how could we get people to settle on Mars with nothing there and using 3D printing to design biodomes that we could live in and grow food in. The kids designed things like Space Rovers, which would travel up and down indoor vertical gardens. The P&C helped us by buying an aeroponics kit, so we were growing plants in air.
“So you use lots of different little projects to then design this final biodome, and the kids went to Sydney to an expo and they ran the whole thing.”
Creative through Covid
Thanks to her focus on STEM, even the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 were well met.
“On the day that the government told us that we were going into lockdown, the department did an urgent meeting, I think we got the call about one o'clock. And within the hour we had every kid home with their tub of books, their technology, whether it was an iPad or a laptop device. And at nine o'clock the next morning we had an online assembly and every kid was on online.”
Children stayed connected daily with Zoom classes and assemblies. They were assigned to teams named for Hogwarts houses and had fun built into lessons, such as via backyard bingo and filming home cooking experiments.
“I do wonder whether parents sometimes realised how great their kids and the teachers were at that time, especially comparing the local schools that were handing out paper units of work and not having any face-to-face time with the kids,” Bec said.
No end to education
In retirement, she is looking forward to travelling and family time. “I've got family overseas. My mum and my uncle are both in dementia care and a nursing hospital, so I spend a lot of time trying to be there for them in their final years. I’ve got six grandchildren, so I'm looking to spend time actually going to their schools and seeing what they do and spending time with them.”
She might even go full circle and return to Buddy Reading.
“That might be the funny part of it all,” Bec said.
The son who drew her into the world of teaching all those years ago now has a little boy aged nearly 12 months who she’s planning to spend time with.
“And I've had a couple of principal friends say, 'We need you in our school, would you come and do some professional learning with our staff and work in our classrooms?'.
"So I may take my STEM and try and get some of these big schools up to date with where Otford is.”
