Transcript
[Music plays and an image appears of a Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools medallion above text: Donna Buckley]
[Images move through to show a medium and then close view of Donna Buckley talking to the camera, Maths signs on a board, and various maths activities]
Donna Buckley: Being a maths teacher in a college of the arts, my role is to sell STEM to creative students.
[Music plays and images move through to show Donna talking to students, and then Donna talking to the camera, and text appears: Donna Buckley, Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools]
My name is Donna Buckley. I’m a mathematics and cyber security teacher at John Curtin College of the Arts in Western Australia.
[Music plays and images move through to show an aerial view looking down on the John Curtin College of the Arts, a facing view of the college, and a close view of the college sign]
[Image changes to show a medium view of Donna talking to the camera, and then the image changes to show a close view of Donna talking to the camera]
John Curtin College of the Arts has nearly 2000 students who come here for their passion for the arts but that doesn’t mean that it’s only the arts.
[Images move through to show Donna talking with students, students listening, and students raising their hands to answer a question]
My role is to engage students for a love of programming and engaging girls through that.
[Images move through to show a close view of Donna talking to the camera, Donna looking at a display of dress designs, Donna picking up a model dress, and a close view of the model dress]
I make connections for my students to the real world to their passions to the arts so I can relate mathematics to them.
[Image changes to show a medium and then close view of Donna talking to the camera, a view of a laptop screen, and students working on laptops]
In mathematics we play with the problem, we write an algorithm, we write a computer program to solve it.
[Images move through to show a dotted map of Australia on a laptop screen, Donna talking to the camera, and a medium view of Donna talking to the camera]
My girls connect to the Perth node of the programming network which connects to nodes across Australia where women teach secondary students how to code.
[Music plays and images move through to show a student turning pages in a text book, students at work, Donna teaching the students, a pile of maths text books on a desk, and a laptop screen]
I’ve retrained so I could offer a cyber security course in my school.
[Image changes to show students smiling, and then the image changes to show a dotted world map on a laptop screen showing lines between various countries]
It’s so important from a young age for cyber safety messages.
[Images move through to show views of Donna talking to the camera, brochures on a desk, students smiling together, a ‘#seeherbetter’ sticker, and students looking at a Toblerone box]
We also need to show students that there are possibilities for careers in this industry and from a diverse range of backgrounds.
[Images move through to show students making a dress model from paper, various signs, Donna helping the students, and a student writing in a notebook]
And it’s that diversity that will help us to overcome the challenges that are ahead and the problems that we need to solve.
[Music plays and images move through to show a laptop, students working on laptops, a diagram of a triangular prism shaped box, and students looking at a Toblerone box]
When students apply mathematics to real world problems that are of interest to them, the results are just amazing.
[Images move through to show Donna talking to the camera, Donna teaching the students, the students at work, Donna helping the students, and Donna talking to the camera]
They may not be a computer scientist but be prepared to take risks, to learn, to keep learning, to solve problems, that’s where the give-back is in education.
[Images move through to show Donna helping the students, and then the image changes to show Donna smiling at the camera]
To receive the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools is such an honour.
[Image changes to show a Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools medallion on the left, the Australian Government Coat of Arms at the bottom right, and text on the right: 2023 Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools]
It validates the work that we’ve been doing putting maths on the map.
[Music plays]
