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Alice turns her sporting passion towards teaching

Teaching is essentially Alice Robinson’s family business, but she was determined to only follow in those footsteps for her own reasons.

Study

If there is any such thing as a teaching dynasty, Alice Robinson definitely belongs to one.

Currently studying her Bachelor of Education (Health and Physical Education) at the University of Tasmania, Alice already has a lot of teachers in the family.

“My mum is a PE teacher, my dad is a metal-work teacher, my auntie is a PE teacher, my uncle is a PE teacher, and my brother did the same degree as me, he graduated in 2019 and he’s teaching now as well.”

A little surprisingly, Alice said that when she finished grade 12, she didn’t know what she wanted to do.

“Everyone just assumed I was going to be a PE teacher like nearly everyone else in my family and so I stubbornly thought no, I’m not gunna do that,” she laughed.

“I took a gap year and worked full time doing admin for a physiotherapy clinic, but I came to the realisation that just because everybody assumed I would become a teacher, it was a stupid reason for me to say: ‘no I’m not doing it.’

“The reason I really wanted to become a teacher was because of my home room teacher in high school, who had this wonderful way of impacting her students, and I wanted to that person for someone else.

“And I’m also really passionate about health and physical activity. So, it fits with who I am, and I enrolled in the degree and did it after all.”

Alice’s active sporting background not only gave her a good grounding to teach physical education, but also meant she had some prior experience of the University’s Newnham campus.

“I was 16 or 17 when the University entered a team in the Aon women’s rugby sevens series. The team was able to have a certain number of players from outside the uni and I was one of them.

“We used all the facilities like the AMC oval and the UniGym three times a week. We had strength and conditioning coaches, who were studying exercise science, helping us out, and our assistant coach was studying at the Australian Maritime College as well.

“So it was a helpful introduction, to have that prior contact and experience with the campus, I was lucky to be able to experience the uni at quite a young age.”

Studying her passion

As she is specialising in teaching Health and Physical Education (HPE), Alice’s degree features some very specific units of study alongside the more generalised Bachelor of Education units.

“We have HPE-specific units like strength and conditioning, and bioscience, so we cross over with Bachelor of Education (Primary) students as well as Bachelor of Exercise and Sport Science students there. And we also study HPE pedagogy, health promotion units, inclusive physical activity and education and so on.”

Alice has continued to be active in sports during her studies and has found the University’s free social sport roster to be an excellent way of making friends and keeping active, physically and socially.

While Alice maintains there was no pressure from her family to become a teacher, she acknowledges she felt some level of expectation, but ultimately she ended up exactly where she wanted to be.

“It’s kinda funny, most schools I go into for pracs, they say ‘oh, you’re such-and-such’s daughter!’ Mum even taught some of my lecturers at uni as well.

“So, to start with, I was maybe a little worried about living up to all of that. But now it’s just, this is my life! I just try to never compare myself, I’m my own person, and I’m doing what I really love.

Do you share Alice’s ambition to make difference in the lives of our school students? By studying Education at the University of Tasmania, you will gain the confidence you need to inspire the next generation.