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From housing commission to Harvard
An educator’ s journey: how the son of Turkish immigrants found his passion in teaching.
Murat Dizdar interviewed by Loren Smith
It’ s a true rags to intellectual riches tale. Murat Dizdar, the son of Turkish immigrants, grew up in a monolithic housing commission block in the inner-Sydney suburb of Glebe. He attended the elite selective public high school, Fort Street, where he duxed. The start to a profitable career followed with an economics / law degree at the University of Sydney.
Then it stopped. Dizdar realised he wasn’ t pursuing his real passion: teaching.
After dropping out of his double degree, he enrolled in a Bachelor of Education( Secondary: Humanities). His parents were“ absolutely mortified”.
However, the change-up led him to enjoy a satisfying and, ironically, prestigious career. Dizdar had stints leading some of Sydney’ s toughest schools in its most multicultural and poorest districts, including the notorious Punchbowl Boys High School. He even spent time in Turkey, modernising schools there.
From 2012, as regional director of South Western Sydney for the NSW Department of Education and Communities, Dizdar supervised the education of over 132,000 children – the largest cohort in NSW, enrolment-wise.
Now, he has been promoted to deputy secretary of school operations and performance, meaning he’ s the key person responsible for operational and service delivery in NSW public schools.
The best part of his job? A teacher to the core, Dizdar says it’ s visiting schools. And he continues to reap teacher rewards, as demonstrated in a recent encounter with former students at a service station.
“ I went to buy one 2L milk and one loaf of bread and I walked out with three loaves of bread and three 2L milks that they insisted on paying for,” he says.
“ They’ re priceless moments that you just don’ t forget as a teacher. They give you lots of energy, and lots of uplift knowing you’ ve had a positive impact on young people.”
His professional achievements were recently recognised by the Public Education Foundation, which awarded him a scholarship to Harvard.
As the foundation’ s inaugural recipient, he took a course in executive leadership. Campus Review asked him what it was like to learn from and teach the best, as well as to reflect on his heady time in education.
CR: You began by studying law, then dropped out and did education. What was your parent’ s reaction to that? MD: They were horrified. I’ d come from a working-class background. We were in housing commission in Glebe, and they still are. They saw law as a ticket to much better prosperity. To leave that behind for teaching they viewed as not the wisest thing to do.
Were you always passionate about teaching and how did that come about? I was. I went to public schools myself – Summer Hill Public and Fort Street High School. It was about Year 9 when I got into stage
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