This year, Carmel warmly welcomed back into the family fold Head of English Mrs Emily Cunningham, who returned from maternity leave following the birth of her first child in December 2018. Prior to going on leave Emily had taught at Carmel for four years, two as an English teacher and two as Head of Learning Area (HOLA) for English. Prior to that, Emily was at Irene McCormack Catholic College for four years.

“I feel refreshed,” Emily says of her time away after eight straight years of teaching. “I believe a parent is a child’s first and best teacher and I’m happy to have been able to put that into practice with my own child to see how important that really is.”

Having completed part of an English as an Additional Language or Dialect qualification in 2018, Emily found she really enjoyed the linguistics unit covered in that course. “Language skills acquired when learning a native tongue are different from those developed when learning a second language and it’s been really interesting to see that with my own daughter’s language acquisition.

“The work I’ve done as an English teacher has also helped me to understand the importance of oral language development from a young age and how everything becomes a teaching moment when chatting with my daughter about the words or numbers she’s showing an interest in."

Originally from Michigan in the USA, Emily completed her undergraduate English degree at North Carolina State University, spending a semester abroad at the UWA as part of her degree. She met her husband, Mark, who hails from Perth at this time, then returned to Perth to pursue a graduate diploma at the University of Notre Dame in Perth.

It’s probably safe to assume Emily’s attraction to Perth was prompted by more than just the ‘people pull’; further from a Michigan winter you couldn’t get here in Perth as we chat on a sunny late summer’s day. “Your car won’t start and the inside of your nostrils actually begin to freeze,” she says of the bone-chilling cold of an upper mid-west north American winter, something she says she doesn’t miss much.

While the bulk of her maternity leave was dedicated to the important job of raising her daughter, Emily certainly wasn’t idle with what little free time remained. She twice wrote the popular Good Answers ATAR Literature textbook, used by all schools offering ATAR Literature, and is undertaking that task again this year. “It’s a guide on how to succeed in the WACE exam. We take sample answers from the WACE exams, write down all the questions and devise activities around those,” she explains.

Asked what trends in teaching have changed most over the decade since she began teaching, Emily believes technology now plays a much bigger role. “We used to have textbooks for spelling and grammar and now it’s all online. We also data-track using online tools which allows us to see real time class patterns of learning and what students might be struggling with. I’ve enjoyed the development of that, and it’s progressed further since I’ve been away.

“Now you can create your own lessons and have them in a central place online and even feedback has gone the same way. For me, moving online has been a positive development and, while it sometimes creates a bit more work, it does appear to benefit our students,” Emily notes.

Aside from her role at school, the other teaching hat Emily wears relates to her love of Pilates. “I like marrying being active with the educational side of body positioning,” she says. Certified to teach mat Pilates some time ago, she undertook the ‘reformer’ Pilates qualification while on maternity leave and now teaches two Saturday reformer classes a fortnight at a studio near her. “The qualification was pretty full-on: 50 hours of teaching practice, 50 hours of self-mastery and 30 hours of observation, so it took two years to be able to complete that while also parenting my daughter. If it all works out, I hope to be doing some co-curricular Pilates for our Carmel students soon,” she adds.

Perhaps a comment from another veteran Carmel teacher says it all, “Emily is a real asset to Carmel School and a fantastic teacher who has always given of her best. It’s great to have her back on board.”