For many, it’s an early realisation as a pre-teen or an adolescent, for others it comes sometime later.
At the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, Deirdre Dennys was working for award-winning firms throughout the Middle East, in high paid (and high stressed) roles on a range of multimillion dollar projects for prestigious clients.
Upon returning home, she continued in architecture at a high-end corporate commercial firm in Sydney working on major projects, mainly in middle management, guiding a team of 12 young Gen Z graduates.
“Learning those middle management skills didn’t really sit nicely with me,” she concedes.
“All of a sudden, you’re off the tools, you’re not really doing the architecture anymore, and you’re people managing.
“But then I got to experience what it was like to have young grads and young architects underneath me, who were just like sponges, and I just really loved that role. And I thought, ‘This is what I want to pursue'. The mentoring really gave me so much joy.”
After stopping work to begin her own family, and just weeks after the birth of her second child in 2020, Dennys began studying a Master of Learning and Teaching program with the University of Southern Queensland.
Offered a job straight after her first prac, with design being a relatively new subject to the 2019 syllabus, and “still breastfeeding a newborn at that stage”, Dennys later opted instead to fill an advertised teacher aid role in 2021, specialising in design at Parklands Christian College in Brisbane.
“…it was a year of teacher aid work before they offered me the ‘Permission to Teach’,” Dennys says.
“And I’ve continued on that Permission to Teach arrangement for two-and-a-half-years now.”
Revelling as a teacher of Year 12 General Design and Year 11 Visual Arts, Dennys has busily been inspiring her growing-by-the-year cohort of students to pursue rewarding careers in design, and at the same time championing a more equitable and sustainable society.
She says she chose senior secondary teaching purely because of the life experience that she brings to the role.
“And my passion and just a deep understanding and pursuit of very real-world learning opportunities that align with my experience out there...” she says.
Dennys says it’s also more challenging for her to be able to go deeper into learning concepts.
“And to speak to senior students like young adults", she adds.
“I bring to the senior classroom, an attitude or an expectation that, ‘Hey, guys, I will treat you like the young adults that you deserve to be treated like if you do the same, if you show respect to me in the same way’.
“I love what I’m doing and getting lots and lots of enjoyment out of it. And the teaching career gives me the flexibility I need with a young family.”
“The Corner Café project allowed me to add a layer of authentic, real-world learning opportunities championing social design for meaningful participation of the marginalised and often ‘forgotten’ members of our local communities,” Dennys says.
Testament to her natural teaching ability, experience and drive, she’s just won the Design and Technology Teachers Association (DATTA) Teacher of the Year 2024 award – not bad for an educator who’s yet to formally qualify.
Awarded for ‘her commitment to the development of new design and technology programs’, what really caught judges’ eyes was her Corner Café project which allowed the mature age teacher to add a layer of authentic, real-world learning opportunities, championing social design for meaningful participation of the marginalised and often ‘forgotten’ members of our local communities.
She says she worked hard on encouraging empathy in her students and thinking more inclusively about the environmental design of spaces.
Dennys says critical to the success of the program was the flexibility for it to be across a term-and-a-half.
“…we all know how busy school life is, it’s near impossible to get even eight weeks of learning in between extracurriculars and excursions, you name it, there’s so many disruptions that come throughout school term.
“I feel like the kids aren’t being exposed to the opportunities that they could be if you had a lot more time.”
Dennys says she loves investigating with students new and deeper concepts of learning, why we love people watching, for example, and how we facilitate this with the design and layout of tables and chairs and how they’re oriented towards the street – whether it be in Paris or on Hasting Street in Noosa.
Here students also considered the concept of inside/outside and the blurring of those lines, balconies, pavement style, dining opportunities, and opportunity for public and private engagement.
Other initiatives she has driven include a Design Open Night where families can view their childrens’ excellence, and a Bucket Hat Project, stemming from a personal interest in fabric and sewing.
“…so the redesign opportunity was ‘Hey, guys, your client is the Cancer Council of Australia and they’ve approached you to design a new range of fabrics to increase awareness about skin cancer’, because design is always about posing wicked problems that are not easily solved.
“I’ve teamed up with a local sublimation printing business, and once the students have designed their fabric pattern, they’ve been digitised.
“I also bring in a lot of incursions from real world designers, I’ve teamed up with a local Brisbane-based textile designer and she came in and did a guest presentation.”
Teaching a Year 12 General subject while still completing her own qualifications has been particularly challenging for Dennys, however, she says she’s grateful for the opportunity to gain this valuable experience early in her teaching career.
Dennys is also hugely proud of her Year 12 Design group’s largest folio project, which she redesigned to be focussed on a stakeholder of homelessness.
“We looked at social inclusion values, at people who are marginalised on the fringes of society, and homelessness ties in a lovely way to the values of the school being a Christian-based organisation. And so we empathised with homelessness by engaging in a business.”
Partnering with Queensland-based charity Rosie’s – Friends on the Street, which delivers food to homeless people, Parklands kids served food and studied the mechanisms of how the charity operates.
Dennys is quick to highlight that while she’s got some great programs off the ground, it’s not all of her own crafting.
“My head of faculty, Geof Greentree is my facilitator, and I keep reminding him that every crazy idea I come up with, and it’s almost daily, he says, ‘I love it’,” she says.
“I can honestly say he’s the best boss I’ve ever had in my life, there’s no glass ceiling.”
Greentree says Dennys’ Corner Café project in particular has inspired students to consider how incorporating ramps, elevators, braille and accessible signage are essential to ensuring spaces can be enjoyed by everyone.
“Deirdre’s growing interest in the industry’s shift to co-design methodologies raises a larger question for the Design and Technology teaching profession about moving from designing for people, to designing with them for designed outcomes that champion human rights,” he says.
“This philosophy was an important underpinning to the Year 9 Design project because as designers, we must recognise that accessibility and inclusion are not merely checklist items, but fundamental elements woven into innovative and marketable designs.”
Dennys’ unorthodox entry into teaching is as encouraging as it is inspiring, a wonderful acknowledgement that if you’re a natural teacher, if you get joy teaching young people, there is always a way and a time and place.
It’s a reminder, too, that with teacher shortages continuing everywhere, there are new and excited educators entering the profession all the time, many who will be excellent in their roles.
Dennys feels like she’s where she wants to be.
“I really thrive in the people aspect of the role,” she says.
“I get a lot of enjoyment about interaction, and I think that’s what I really, really missed as a sole practitioner.
"You know, at times, where I’ve been working in my private practice, in my home-based studio and not having anyone to bounce ideas off, not having anyone to talk to unless you make a phone call, and it’s just a totally different vibe.
"Being a sociable kind of personality, it really suits me.”
