Premier's Teacher of the Year 2008

Premier’s Teacher of the Year 2008, Rosinda Seara says successful teaching is all about showing her young adult students respect. 

The head of the society and environment learning area at Hamilton Senior High School says she and her students have “huge discussions” about the way teenagers are portrayed.

“In the old days, children were encouraged to be seen but not heard; now they’re encouraged to have an opinion but they’re not always given due respect when they do,” she says. “I believe that when you show students respect, their actions improve.”

Rosinda’s nomination for the award lists so many curricular and extra-curricular events and activities of which she has been part that her CV must rival a large corporate CEO’s in length.

She is an instructor with the Emergency Service Cadets, practicum students’ mentor, has been chosen to attend various interstate and overseas events including professional conferences and the Premier’s ANZAC Student Tour, been a TEE marker, professional development course presenter, course writer, translator and interpreter, new history courses of study facilitator, History Teachers’ Association of WA committee member, and has written Department publications for students from non-English speaking backgrounds, to name but a handful of her accomplishments. She also takes students’ wellbeing very seriously, having more than once gone in her own time to check on students at home or in hospital.

“I believe in maximising opportunities for all students,” says Rosinda, who worked as a teacher assistant for a decade before turning to teaching 21 years ago. “This is a school in a lower socioeconomic area but I won’t have any student say that they can’t make it.“

Rosinda, who wears her commitment to public schooling on her sleeve by choosing to send her own children to public schools, is also a big believer in the ‘bigger’ classroom.

“Yes, there’s lots of paperwork associated with excursions but it’s worth it,” she says. “I obtained a bus licence 10 years ago and that makes it affordable and easier. We’ve been on 18 excursions this year, not counting the cadets.”