It's great to have Mrs Tanya Allen as Carmel's new Business Management teacher (taking both general and ATAR courses) and ATAR Finance and Accounting teacher in Carmel’s HASS Department. Now in her second term at Carmel, we caught up with Tanya to find out how she's settling in. 

You’ve got a term under your belt teaching Business Management (both general and ATAR) and ATAR Finance and Accounting in Carmel’s HASS Department. How has the first part of the year gone for you as you settle into your new environment? 

The first part of the year has been a wonderful testament to the saying that ‘a change is as good as a holiday’. The Carmel staff and students and community have been incredibly welcoming and have made the settling in period very smooth for me.  

Tell us a bit about your career journey prior to landing at Carmel. 

I completed a Bachelor of Commerce at UWA, whilst working part-time in legal and financial industries. After my degree, I continued to work in finance, assisting small businesses with financial management issues. I was responsible for clients who needed help with anything from implementing accounting software to changing their structure. It was a fascinating position, but I didn’t feel fulfilled by the role and couldn’t see a future in that industry. By luck, a conversation with a friend led me to realise ‘commerce’ subjects were taught to high school students in WA, and after a bit of exploration I decided to undertake a Graduate Diploma in Education. I haven’t looked back and have since taught at both private and government schools before coming to Carmel this year.  

Was your interest in commerce and teaching as a career path something that was evident to you during your school days? 

I have always been fascinated by business and finance and used to drive my parents a little mad asking questions about the stock market after watching the report on the news each night! It wasn’t a career path I considered at school however due to subjects not being offered to me, and teaching was definitely not on my radar at that time. It was not until I went to university and started to explore my interests that I truly started to develop a sense of what I wanted to pursue as a career. 

An area of interest for you is the role of critical thinking within education. Can you expand briefly on the role you think this plays in the lives of our students as they learn? 

Our students are now able to access information about anything, at the drop of a hat (thanks, Google). But this information is often inaccurate or biased, and psychologically it has been shown that young adults lack the ability to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sources of information. This skill develops over time with experience, but it can also be taught. Understanding how we know what we know (eg Is it anecdotal or a result of scientific research) becomes more important to establish than what we know, in the minds of our students. This is so that they have the ability to decipher the information presented to them and to locate reliable and accurate information. Being a strong critical thinker, I believe, is a life-skill, not just an academic one.  

If you had an unexpected all-expenses-paid month off from your normal routine, how would you choose to spend that time? 

I would spend it away from technology, down-south, reading, doing yoga and walking. When can I go? 

Eagles, Dockers or neither? 

I am unashamedly ignorant of the game, so neither!