introducing Donna Mattick, Literacy Support Teacher

Staff Story

Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Donna Mattick, a long-term member of the Santa Sabina staff, has just been recognised as a Teacher of Excellence by PETAA, the Primary English Teaching Association Australia.

The award recognises outstanding teachers who have positive impact on students’ learning experiences and learning outcomes in literacy across the primary curriculum. Other criteria used to come to a shortlist include commitment to professional development and collaboration with colleagues to address student learning needs as well as demonstrated commitment to the education profession.

Donna has spent 21 years of her 26-year teaching career on the staff of Santa Sabina on our Primary Years campus – Del Monte. Initially a Year 5 teacher, then a Year 1 teacher, she later moved into a reading recovery role and is now our Literacy Support Teacher.

‘I’ve always had a love for literacy and sharing that with students’, Donna says.

As our Literacy Support Teacher, Donna gives certain students the extra support they need in learning to read. She takes small groups of students from Kindergarten, Years 1 and 2 and works with them in a separate area in parallel with the classroom program. Donna’s work helps these students close the gap.

‘Early intervention is the best intervention’, she says.

The curriculum now focuses on foundational skills, which are achieved using techniques such as phonics. Donna has been implementing this type of teaching for 10 years and using alphabetic code and decodable texts. Yet she also notes that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. ‘The curriculum really specifies exactly what the students need to know at each stage of learning and the assessments are very clear. They give us a lot of evidence and reading the data really helps – I think we are a lot better at doing this now than when I first started teaching’, she says.

Donna acknowledges that learning to read is a complex process – our brains aren’t wired to read so we have to learn from teachers who help us make connections through sounds. It’s a slow process to begin with but as lessons go on it becomes more automatic.

Donna is so passionate about her work that her number one pastime outside of work, apart from long walks with her dog, is looking for better ways to help students with their literacy whether it be reading, writing or spelling. She has always loved children’s literature and her favourite author is Julia Donaldson – ‘she’s written so many beautiful books, she’s just amazing’.

The best piece of advice Donna can give parents of young children is to read to them as much as possible. ‘It’s hearing the language, the syntax and how words go together – having that vocabulary is just such a benefit to all students and being read to as children is just the most important thing parents can do. Lots of picture books, lots of story books, lots of talking about characters’.

And Donna has a secret weapon in her classroom too. ‘One thing I do notice that when you have a class, and it might be a little bit unsettled, the minute you pick up a book and you start reading you’ve got them in the palm of your hands. They love to be read to, boys and girls – all students – they just like look at you, we’re ready to go, they listen and just love it.’

At Santa Sabina we are fully cognisant of the power of reading, with our libraries, our author events (such as the exciting visit of Angourie Rice and Kate Rice this week) our Open Book parent/child bookclub and other events. And we all subscribe to the view of Frederick Douglass who said, ‘Once you learn to read, you will be forever free’.