A bit of Mr Chips

Mr Oliver Morgan, Dominic College old scholar, Class of 2008, has completed his practical at Dominic College, this term. There was a nice little item in the most recent edition of Veritas, suggested by Fr Frank Bertagnolli, about the cumulative 60 years of my family’s association with Dominic.

In 2017 I will teach my 5,000th student at Dominic. He or she also becomes family and one of the greatest satisfactions in this vocation is to see the seeds you sow in the classroom bear fruit in the world.

At a meeting, in October, I sat in a faculty group with Kate Longey and Oliver Morgan. Kate made the observation that she had been a student of mine, done her practice teaching under my supervision and is now my colleague at Dominic, that when she did that practice she taught Oliver, who was a student in my class at that time and is now undertaking his final teaching practice under my supervision: turn, turn, turn.

I might not be Mr Chips, but, I know how he must have felt. I now teach alongside six people I once taught, and am now supporting the fourth student teacher who is a past Dominic student of mine.

This week it is my privilege to observe the final step of Oliver Morgan’s journey to becoming a teacher, I hope without too much hubris, to claim some small part in it and a great pleasure to welcome home a member of the Dominic Family.
Mr Warwick Cardamatis - Nostalgic Teacher