Retiree's Lunch Update August 2020
Written by Dr Richard Thwaites, FRACI CChem
Published 10 August 2020
Jenny Sharwood OAM, MACE, FAIE, FRACI CChem is an outstanding educator. She is also an outstanding presenter and entertained RACI Retirees to a fascinating insight into her life as a teacher and author at the “Virtual Lunch” on Tuesday August 4th.
While Jenny was still at school, one of her own teachers told her in a rather disparaging manner: “Girls don’t do Science” which was enough to spur her into a lifetime of chemistry. She was significantly outnumbered by boys in her final years at school and again at Melbourne University in her chemistry classes. In those days, boys generally looked down their noses at female science students. But despite the sneers and snide remarks, Jenny thrived and along with her classroom teaching, has spent a great deal of time developing and running student leadership programs that focused on finding constructive solutions to issues such as sexism, poverty and racism.
After university, Jenny went on to take up teaching posts in several Victorian schools where she was often the only teacher with a science degree. And in the early stages of her career, she faced many setbacks, hardships and cases of discrimination. Jenny told many anecdotes regarding the schools where she taught (in the State and Private systems), the various colourful characters she encountered along the way, and some of the difficulties she had to endure.
Problems with her hearing caused Jenny to move from the classroom to other facets of education. She has authored over 20 text books, she has acted as a consultant, worked with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, and has presented numerous teacher workshops at conferences in Victoria and interstate.
Jenny has been very generous with her time, giving many hours freely to the RACI. She is currently Chair of the Chemical Education Group within the Victorian Branch, she is a lead author in the Australian National Chemistry Quiz (ANCQ) which is now in over 20 countries, has played a significant role in updating the rules for the Victorian State Titration Competition, and in the past has been a regular contributor to “Chemistry in Australia”.
Discussion after Jenny’s talk included questions regarding the rigour of school chemistry curricula today. Students these days know a lot less about some things than their predecessors, but on the other hand, a lot more about others. The requirement for competency in advanced maths seems no longer to be the case, much to the detriment of student understanding of the subject. The question of whether school chemistry should be designed to give students a general overview of chemistry as a whole, or whether it should be targeted as a prerequisite for university chemistry continues to be a topic of debate. A number of former academics questioned how students can successfully embark on a university chemistry course without a basic understanding of school chemistry.
Jenny was too modest to mention that she was recently invited to make a presentation to an international audience of several thousand teachers, mainly from India, on how to devise excellent multiple-choice questions for test and exam papers.
Jenny did briefly talk about her voluntary work with the Afghanistan Australian Development Organisation (AADO), working alongside the Executive Director, Dr Nouria Salehi AM. AADO’s aims are to ensure Afghanistan people, particularly women, are able to achieve their full potential and to provide training and resources to achieve this objective. Jenny’s role is to focus on the very successful science teacher education flagship program. (For more information, visit: www.aado.org.au )
Jenny was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to secondary education in June 2017, and was named Chemistry Educator of the Year in 2019 by the Chemistry Education Association.
And everyone at the “lunch” agreed that Jenny was an extremely worthy winner of both awards.