Nearly two decades ago, Melodie Potts Rosevear wrote down the words “Teach for Australia,” blinded by the fact the paper held the power to lead transformative change for both educators and students.
She was driven by the concept of equity in education, with a passion to give every child equitable opportunities at school irrespective of their living location. Asking the seemingly simple question of, “How do we bring in more people into teaching where we want them to work, teach and lead the most?” – Teach for Australia was born, and became a leading employment-based pathway into the teaching profession.
I recently interviewed Melodie, who is now entering a new chapter of her life and passing the esteemed leadership position to fellow Teach For Australia Alumni, Edwina Doyle.
Coming from a background in economics and public policy, Melodie was continually inspired by great teachers who “effectively intervened at certain points” in her life. However, many of her peers growing up in rural Appalachia in the United States, didn’t experience or access the same resources and education as her, igniting a fiery passion for equitable education within her. She believes “the power of an individual teacher at the right moment in a child’s life can make all the difference.” Teaching, in her eyes, is “one of the most rewarding, but toughest professions requiring such executive functioning”.
“Every moment, there are so many decisions happening throughout the day, never mind the actual syllabus content, there are lots of other things happening around you,” she says. “Education is everything.”
Inspired by the work of Teach for America, a similar program based in the United States that was changing the tertiary education and employment preferences for many of her peers, Teach for Australia was soon born. Teach for Australia is built on a “sense of inspiration, purpose and empowerment to push for better learning spaces, so that every child has the opportunity to learn,” Melodie describes.
Fast forward a few years after she initially wrote down the idea for Teach for Australia, and it expanded rapidly, reshaping the education system in areas of equity. Educational inequity in Australia is far more complex than what we might initially believe. “It’s mindsets about what we actually think kids can achieve, it’s resource allocation, changes in government policy, pedagogical practice, strong school leadership, strong curriculum and wellbeing support.”
Melodie is a trailblazer for change, enacting programs to allow for undergraduate and postgraduate students to find their place within the education world, expanding upon their leadership, willingness to learn and desire to teach whilst studying. Apprentices and Alumni – the official Teach for Australia names for the current and past students – work collaboratively together, alongside mentors and coaches, to help equip future teachers with the appropriate skills they need to not only teach the curriculum effectively, but connect closely with the leaders of tomorrow. \
An employment based teaching method is described by Melodie as “[increasing] the amount of time that teachers spend in the classroom, as they’re practicing and learning.” Melodie prides Teach for Australia on their support model, by focusing on “what makes a great teacher.”
“[Teach for Australia] works to the profile of resilience, perseverance, empathy and adaptability,” she says. “Schools have picked up some aspects of this model to support their novice teachers, or indeed, driven enquiries into the education system.”
Navigating the top leadership position within a female-dominated career, such as education, was an equal challenge as it was an act of empowerment. The 2023-2024 statistics from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency identified that female educators working in the private sector make up 66% of the total workforce, whilst only 39% hold high leadership positions, such as CEO or equivalent. Whereas, out of 67% of total female educators in the public system, a total of 62% of women hold managerial positions.
Melodie was driven by a sense of injustice, fairness and asking herself “why not?” when faced with challenges that threatened her drive and position. “It was big institutions that didn’t want to shift,” she recalls. “I was young, I was female. There was probably ageism, sexism and a bit of a power imbalance.. It definitely doesn’t explain all of it, but a few moments in particular. There were just as many people who thought ‘Yeah, this is a good idea! Yeah, we’ll come behind it!’”
She often reflected on her leadership by asking herself, “If you can look back on your life and think you were part of something in collaboration with others, that was helping to make the world just a bit fairer, when all the powers tend to want to drive us towards greater inequity, how good is that? How enriching is that?” According to the annual impact reports from Teach for Australia, in 2024, it was revealed that “95% of a total of 66 partner principals surveyed from an annual survey conducted by TFA believe that Teach for Australia Associates make a positive difference in their school, whilst 89% of Associates who worked at over 600 partnership schools, are actively improving their students’ academic outcomes.” Meanwhile, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership has endorsed employment based teaching models through a ‘High Quality Professional Learning Cycle.’
Among these extraordinary achievements, Melodie says she is most proud of, “introducing a growing number of 1600+ people into teaching.” She believes this number will continue to grow over time as “education equity demands leadership of us all, and that there is a way to continue to drive systems change at a school level, at a regional level, at a system level, which is needed for decades to come”.
“We need less focus on the ‘how’ to produce a teacher, but more on ‘what’ are you trying to imbue them with?,” she explains.
The success of Teach for Australia in the eyes of Melodie “feels momentous, but also, educational inequity is still there.”
When handing over the CEO title to fellow Alumni, Edwina Doyle, Melodie feels very energised by her successor who has both taught and worked in the education system and social policy. Although bittersweet, stepping down allows Melodie to “learn how to just be, lift my gaze to the wider world and organise where to enact change next.”
She hopes to leave her commendable legacy with the words of John. F. Kennedy’s 1962 university commencement address echoing behind her. “He talked about going to the moon; ‘we went to the moon not because it was easy, but precisely because it was hard.’ I likened that to the strive of educational equity, or indeed, fairness and justice. Within the context of so many things trying to get us to choose easy, when faced with the opportunity, to go ahead and choose the hard. Choose the hard because that’s how you get to places you have never been before.”
As a society, we have never entered the world of educational equity, but Teach for Australia can help play a role in driving us there, allowing for every child, every learner, to have an opportunity to succeed.
Top photo – Pictured: Melodie Potts Rosevear, Source: Teach for Australia website
