To Be a Teacher

12/2/2014

Sorry, this is going to be boring, but just had to write
something about it.
I recently re-discovered the badge I gained when
attending Burwood Teachers’ College, way back when. The Latin inscription reads: ‘Animum Cultum Parabo’, words which formed the introductory part of the College song (or anthem). Following the Latin words, we sang, ‘foundations firm we lay…’. I guess that was what we aspired to do as future teachers. I hope I did lay a few ‘firm foundations’.
Some translations: Animum (translated form the Latin): mind/intellect/soul.
Cultum: service/cultivate/promote.
Parabo: prepare/provide/raise.
I can only hope that during my many teaching days, I did manage to cultivate and prepare some minds. I think I did, but can never be sure of how much.
I undertook teacher ‘training’ via (firstly) a year in a school as a student teacher (no doubt referred to as an internship nowadays) followed by three years at Teachers’ College. Procedures changed not long after I finished college and that place of learning turned into Deakin University and the students then graduated with either a Diploma of Teaching (Primary) or a Bachelor of Education. These qualifications give a more scholarly and accomplished impression than the ‘Trained Infant Teachers’Certificate’ with which I graduated. But I do wonder if these latest teachers are as grounded in the ‘nitty gritty’ of teaching as we earlier graduates were.
Does a grander sounding graduate title make a better teacher?

As a footnote: Times of singing the College song – and the college song itself - vanished with the change to the ‘new’ university life; students no longer gather on Wednesday mornings to sing the anthem and enjoy a morning of togetherness, with singing and talking and (yes, even) some entertainment. People are a lot more insular, it seems, and each student does their best (or
not) in their own way.
I guess that’s progress.

PS: The 1954 inscription on the badge does not indicate the year I graduated (!), but the year the college was formed.

4 Comments

Di Hillman

1/4/2016 11:37:29 am

Six of us who started at BTC IN 1966 are having a 50 years celebration this month. Do you by any chance have a copy of the words to the song?

John Gough

24/12/2018 01:04:31 pm

I was a lecturer at Burwood State College from 1976, and continued there, with a few "gaps" until I retired at the end of 2011.
My high school girlfriend, Far Brown, spent 1966 and 1967 training at Burwood Teachers' College, along with several other classmates from Norwood High School.
The following notes may help.
College Song, with lyrics by Victor Fitcher and music by Christine Limb:
Animum Cultum Parabo, foundations firm we lay
Of eager, questing, tolerant minds,
Widening day by day.
On two world shield our symbol -
Bright sun, aspiring tree.
Keen minds that strive to truth and light
Ever free shall be.
http://fusion.deakin.edu.au/collections/show/48
http://fusion.deakin.edu.au/items/show/787

John

Dianna Edwards

24/12/2018 01:27:53 pm

Thanks so much for that info, John. When I was contacted a couple of years ago regarding the Teachers' College song, I did (miraculously!) remember all the words correctly - after a mere 57 or so years.
Thank you for the links to the history of the college. I have had but a short glance so far but, when I have more time, I will love reading it. Have to admit, when I saw the pic of the staff, my exclamation of 'Oh, my god!' was almost loud enough to frighten my husband in the other end of the house! (I think it was the sight of Miss Downward that produced the biggest shock - we did not get on).
Thanks again.
Dianna (Burwood Teachers' College, 1959 - 1961)

28/12/2018 09:27:38 am

It was my pleasure to have helped, Dianna.
I mis-typed a name -- Fay Brown -- in my earlier message. Some of her ex-Norwood friends at Burwood included Carol Parkes, Janice Loosely and, I think, Jan Reid.
Later, when I became a lecturer at the Burwood campus of the State College, and later, Victoria College, and then Deakin University, I met other staff members who had been TPTC student-teachers at Burwood in the early 1960s.
These included Brian Doig (who retired during 2018), and Ron Smith (who died, suddenly, in 2016), and Trevor Hutchins (who later became a professor in an American university). They each had their happy memories of student-teacher days, and the good lecturers and the not so good and scary lecturers.
Some of those early lecturers, such as Frank Higgins, in Music, teaching recorder, were legends in their careers!
I am sure for most student-teachers, even though Burwood felt and behaved a lot like a Senior High School, with uniforms and badges and college musicals and college sports, it was a first taste of real adult late-teenage freedom! (Heady days!)
John

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