Maddy on the teachers they loved

“I miss the teachers so much more than I miss the students at high school,” declared Maddy, during our 2012 interview in a Thornbury warehouse apartment.

“I went from your average suburban primary school, co-ed, to an all-girls high school and whereas I’d had an almost exclusively male friendship group in primary school - I was always one of the boys - suddenly I was around all these teenage girls and I didn’t know what to do. I felt like everyone had been taken away for a lesson in how to be a teenage girl and how to talk to people and what to think and do, and I’d missed it entirely.”

Maddy said that although they made a few friends, they always felt “like a big of any outcast”.

“At the start of high school I was just so different. I was smart but I wasn’t top of the class. I wasn’t interested in parties or boys - obviously! I just liked being at home with my books!”

Maddy described three teachers in high school who made all the difference to surviving what they described as "a six-year bad dream". There was the English teacher. “I’d written this piece in English class about how alone I felt…

My teacher sat me down and said, ‘It gets better. It will get better for you. You are much better than you think and you can come and talk to me at any time.’

There was also the Year 11 Maths teacher. “He was gay and I came out to him. He helped me with some relationship issues I was having and gave me the courage to come out to my parents."

Then there was another Maths teacher, from when Maddy was in junior secondary, who "when I was having real troubles with friends would sit me down during lunchtime, talk to me and help me out when I was having a really bad day."

When we did that interview a decade ago, Maddy was in their final year of a primary teaching degree and they expressed so articulately how they wanted to change things up for their students. “When I was at primary school it was a very heteronormative environment. If you were doing dancing lessons, girls would line up here, boys would line up there and you’d be paired up. And there was boys against girls for sport and things like that. I want to change that. I don’t gender to be separating kids. I don’t want kids to grow up thinking - OK, there’s husbands and wives, there’s boys and girls.

“I was teaching a Grade 5/6 class and the topic of sexuality came up in a lesson and every single one of the kids said, ‘I wouldn’t care if someone was gay.’ My favourite quote came from one girl who said, ‘If my brother was gay, I wouldn’t hate him, I’d give him a coming out party!’ I want to see more of that.”

Maddy added, “I want to be one of those teachers that kids can talk to and trust. I want to help them.”

That was 10 years ago, and Maddy’s path since then has been a fascinating one… watch this space for updates.