[Catalist] Looking for work

[Leon Harris]

Hi to all.
A close friend and colleague of mine is searching for work next year.
She is a STEM expert, and a good operator in the classroom, having 
taught in both low socioeconomic and high socioeconomic status schools 
for the last 7 years.

Her subject area is Biology (having taught both Y11 and Y12 classes over 
the past 5 years) and Maths. However, she has a couple of years of a 
physics degree and an honours degree in biotechnology.

She is a STEM expert, with extensive software development skills (dating 
back to when she founded an IT database-writing company. If you have 
seen World Firefighters Games or Mall Manager, you would know some of 
her clients). Her programming languages iclude, Access, VBA, C/C++ in an 
Arduino context, python (she designed, built and wrote a burglar alarm 
to run on a Raspberry Pi in python), and BASH. She also wrote software 
for Australia's beamline at The Photon Factory in Japan, in the days 
before we had our own synchrotron, and has reasonable Linux systems 
administration skills (to the level that one would expect of a web 
developer in a LAMP environment).

She also has presented at a number of teacher PDs, including CONSTAWA, 
and is active in developing STEM strategies, particularly mechatronics 
that is aimed at getting girls engaged in STEM. Her current school is 
implementing an interactive, virtual tour of the history of the school, 
based on a technology framework she designed.

Quite a talent, in my opinion.

These times are hard in schools - anecdotally mine has just received a 
1.7 million dollar recurrent haircut, and many others have been skinned 
by a comparable amount. It is also a sad fact that systemic (as distinct 
from personal) ageism and sexism are features of the education system - 
many women find it hard to enter or return to the sector after taking 
time off for child rearing, leading to a differential penalty on our 
female colleagues for reproduction, a not insignificant task that is 
essential to our society!

So the lack of an ability to go country, all those years ago, a change 
of education sector, and a series of contracts has meant that come this 
year's hard times, she does not have a job this next year.

If anyone knows of anyone who needs a smart operator, who does not 
generate behaviour problems, who is autonomous and highly skilled, 
please drop me a line off list.

Cheers,
Leon