| COVER STORY
So there was a whole mind shift of how to help those kids, as well as how to get through my first year."
"I was there for four years. I taught year two for my first three years. In my second year of teaching, I became the year level organiser. I was in charge of the year two team and then the year three team."
Alex acknowledges the impact of a great mentor.
"I was fortunate I had Margaret Gurney. She was my first principal. She's now the Regional Director in Far North Queensland. I was privileged to have her as my first principal because I learned so much from her. She was good at being able to see your abilities and
"Some of my teachers who had taught me were now colleagues. There was that awkwardness. Do I call you Meryl or Mrs Macey?"
Alex also recalls her first day of school as a beginning teacher.
"You mentally go through preparing for your first day. On my first day, our school was closed because of the 2011 floods. The school itself was fine, but the area, the whole suburb was pretty much flooded. I had a few students in my first year of teaching that had just gone through that; they had lost their house and everything. We had about 800 students at the school and 70 families directly impacted by flooding.