General News

Vivienne Jones (1988) They/Them

I work as an ESL instructor (English as a Second Language) at the University of Calgary. I got my M.Ed. in TESL (teaching English as a second language) from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and then moved to Calgary in 2009 with my spouse, who was doing a PhD. I started working at the UofC and I’ve been there ever since. In 2015, our child was at the University daycare, and I had the idea of getting some of our more advanced ESL students to visit the kids and read storybooks to them. The program is now in its tenth year, and we have expanded to include the upper two levels of ESL students. This reading program is all about decolonising English. Our students don’t have to fold themselves into a different culture – they use English as a tool for their own success. By reading to the children at the daycare, they bring different accents and rhythms and become role models of English in an inclusive way.

My idea of inclusiveness is not just that we invite people into our comfortable spaces, but that we open ourselves up to the people around us. This program connects the ESL students in Continuing Education (who are there Monday-Friday for 13 weeks) with the children at the daycare (who are all children of students, most of whom are in graduate degrees) with the Education library resources & librarians.

I have lived in eight countries, and worked in as many fields. I have been a lab assistant, an editor and author, an award-winning cartoonist, and a freelance musician. I have worked in law, copyright, business and science. However, it wasn’t until I worked as a teaching assistant in Japan that I discovered my calling. For the last two decades, I have been a language instructor, using my experience with cultural displacement and neurodivergence to help create safe and inclusive spaces for learning.

Teegan Wattam (2017)

We love to watch our alumni changing the world in their own special way.

Teegan Wattam (2017), a proud Larrakia and Wadjigan woman and AIE scholarship student, has certainly been making her mark.

Teegan was the first First Nations student to receive a Bachelor of Health Science/Master of Speech and Language Therapy at Charles Darwin University.

Since then she was the keynote speaker at the Discovering Indigenous Greatness in Education’ (DiGI Ed Talks) conference hosted by Lindisfarne Anglican Grammar School and was awarded Youth of the Year at the Darwin NAIDOC week awards in 2024.

Congratulations Teegan!

Bronte Charles (2018)

It is so special to see Pymble alumni connecting with current students.

Earlier this term, Bronte Charles (2018), proud Bundjalung Mununjali woman and Go Foundation Scholar, returned to Pymble as the guest speaker at our NAIDOC assembly.

Bronte, who completed a Bachelor of Marketing and Media from Macquarie University and is currently working as a digital producer and journalist for NITV and SBS Australia, generously shared her experiences of school and beyond with our students.

The Pymble and Milingimbi school students who were lucky enough to attend the recent Garma Festival in East Arnhem Land also had a chance to learn about journalism from Bronte, and were even interviewed for NITV!