Introducing new staff

Joshua Arandt

Joshua Arandt has a passion for travel, music, and literature. He comes from a sports background, and many moons ago was a national Kart champion. Recently his background has been in book publishing, though he has made a habit of studying and living across many parts of the world. He considers his curiosity for life, resilience, and creativity to be amongst his stronger qualities.

The thing Joshua is most looking forward to at Northcote High School is building positive relationships with students, parents, and staff. He has an incessant drive for learning, and feels very strongly about local community. So what better way to fuse those two motivations than by working as an educator? By challenging students academically, and by engaging them in ways that allow them to flourish and lead lives of value, good teachers transfer that spark of inquisitiveness that is so innately human. This is what Joshua aspires to do each and every time he walks through the doors at Northcote High.

Outside of school you’ll most likely find him sitting with friends over a card game, watching sports, reading in one of Northcote’s many haunts, or ceaselessly clacking away at some obscure draft of writing.

Rachel Gramm

Originally from the Gold Coast, Queensland, Rachel relocated to Melbourne at the end of 2008. She has lived in Northcote since 2010 and loves the local community. She is keen on most sports and is an avid Bombers fan, but some less-than-average knees keep her predominantly spectating.  Rachel loves physical geography, the environment and natural sciences. She is in her element with Biology, Marine Science and Evolution, years 7-9 Maths, and camps and excursions. Rachel is passionate about living as green as possible.

During Rachel's time at Greensborough, her first and only school, she worked in Student Management, with the Girls’ Football Academy, as Home Group teacher, and across Science, Maths and VCAL. She created the Heron Island Field Trip, which takes groups of kids up to the Great Barrier Reef, and has been on numerous snow, surf, Wilson’s Prom and adventure ed camps. Rachel is super excited to come to Northcote, and very keen to get amongst the Science resources. Rachel is still trying to wrap her head around the size of the place, so please bear with her if she struggles to remember names! Rachel is very much looking forward to the 15-minute walk from home, and contributing to the students of the local area.

Zachary Healey  

Zachary is thrilled to take up a teaching position at Northcote High School. The Northcote High School focus on developing global citizens and building upon students’ personal interests fits with his own view of a contemporary education.  

For the past two years, he has worked as an English, Politics, History and Geography teacher at the Distance Education Centre Victoria (DECV). Working at the school has provided him with a variety of educational experiences and the opportunity to work with a huge diversity of students. At DECV, he at various stages fulfilled the roles of Year 7 Coordinator, Student Voice and Leadership Coordinator and Student Wellbeing Coordinator. He has been proud to be part of developing a strong student leadership culture at DECV and guiding these students through the Advance Leadership Program and Duke of Edinburgh Award.

Outside of teaching Zachary is a big supporter of the Sydney Swans Football Team and enjoys keeping up with some of the latest happenings in the political world.

Zachary is looking forward to contributing to the innovative journey of the Northcote High School community and getting to know students through some of the school’s co-curricular offerings. 

Abby Malagoli

Abby Malagoli is 22 years old and recently graduated with a Bachelor of Applied Science Health and Physical Education at RMIT University Bundoora. Her years of University at RMIT taught her not only how to be the best possible teacher she can be but allowed her to meet many new people and develop lifelong friendships. Abby loves sport especially dancing, basketball and surfing. She enjoys travelling, movies and TV, time with family and friends, the beach, barracking for North Melbourne and walking her pug Lebron.

Some of Abby's greatest achievements have been being able to teach people how to swim and be safe in the water through being a swimming instructor as well as achieving the highest score in Victoria for ballet examinations when she was younger. Winning Gold for AFL university games for RMIT in 2016 was another great moment which made her appreciate sport and all the joys it brings whether it is to win or lose.

Abby is looking forward to meeting new people and immersing herself into Northcote by working alongside them in a team environment. She is excited to begin her teaching career and will strive to give her students the best possible learning environment as well as promote a healthy and active lifestyle approach within her Physical Education classes. Being a new teacher Abby is really looking forward to developing relationships with the staff and students, building rapport with them as early as she can to foster a positive environment.

Hannah Zhang

Hannah Zhang is honoured to join the maths team at Northcote High School this year.

Hannah is from China and has been in Melbourne for five years. After graduating from the East China Normal University in Shanghai, she became a high school maths teacher and worked at the same school for a few years. When the graduated students came back to school to see her and said she was one of their best teachers and they appreciated her teaching and help, it made this job the most rewarding one. In this experience, she was teaching year 12 students for five years, and they had obtained desirable results. Hannah was also involved in creating a school-based mathematics reference book, which was published and had high sales in Shanghai.

Hannah completed a Master of Teaching degree at Monash University in 2016, and majored in mathematics and Chinese. Last year she worked at Alkira Secondary College for six months teaching both maths and Chinese. Being a student again and re-starting the career from a new teacher in a second language gave Hannah a huge challenge as well as an incredible opportunity to learn more.

Hannah believes she will make a significant progress in this renowned school and hopes to make her contribution to the school shortly. Becoming one of the best teachers for the students at this school is her dream.

Besides the passion for teaching, travelling takes a lot of Hannah's spare time. That's probably another reason she loves this job. Hannah plays badminton fairly well but hasn’t been practicing it for long.