Celebrating the Career of Michael Delaney

43 years dedicated to Catholic Education with gratitude, faith and compassion.

Michael Patrick Delaney was born in 1957. The eldest of six children, he was raised in a loving home built on Catholic values, in Upwey at the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges.

In 1962, before his 5th birthday, Michael started prep at Upwey Primary School. Despite his young age, his skills in reading, writing and arithmetic were already evident and he was moved up to grade one half way through his first year. (Only to be told the following year that he would be required to repeat grade one because he was too young!) Michael then shifted to St Thomas More Primary in Belgrave for grade two where he completed the remainder of primary school before progressing to St Joseph’s, Ferntree Gully in 1969 for secondary school.

A natural born problem solver, Michael always wanted to be a scientist and in 1974 he headed off to study a Bachelor of Science at Monash University. However, the voice of his year 12 maths teacher, “Have you thought about being a Maths teacher? You’re pretty good at Maths you know.”, lingered in his mind. So, after completing his first degree he decided to undertake a Diploma of Education, not only as a potential career opportunity but also as a way to stay at university and avoid the workforce for a bit longer!

While on placement at his old school, Michael told the deputy principal that if there were any jobs going, he’d be interested. The DP advised him to chat with the principal, Fr. Mick Ledda and after that one conversation, Michael was advised there would be a job waiting for him the following year.

And so it was to be that in late January 1979 his illustrious teaching career began as a Maths teacher at St Joseph’s College in Ferntree Gully, where he remained for 17 years.

Having been there as a student to witness the ethos of the school, Michael found himself in good stead to live out the values as a teacher. The Salesian Priests and Brothers who ran the school were founded by Italian Saint John Bosco who originally set up a school in Turin for street kids to get them off the streets and give them life and job skills. That order grew and now runs schools all over the world. 

St John Bosco became an inspiration for Michael. He was one of the few founders of Religious Congregations who wrote specifically on how to deal with kids. His counter-cultural philosophies focused on a preventative system, rather than a repressive one. A common phrase he used with his brothers and priests was ‘meet them at the water pump’ - meaning to meet the kids at their level. Education is very relational and for St. John Bosco that relationship started in informal settings and was built on in the formal setting of the classroom.

This motto of building relationships and showing compassion is a trait Michael has continued to carry throughout his career.

During his time at St Joseph's in Ferntree Gully, Michael held many leadership positions including Maths and Technology Co-ordinator and  Middle School (years 9 & 10) Co-ordinator. In 1989 he progressed to Senior School Co-ordinator which was also the first year the hybrid HSC and VCE was run. 

He fondly recalls the excitement in 1981, when the first Apple IIE computers made their way into schools. The small 60MB hard drive on his first ever 1991 laptop pales in comparison to today’s modern computers. He still remembers how much easier it was to put a timetable together on even the slowest computer rather than cutting up pieces of paper to represent a teacher and a class and shuffling them around into position!

By 1982, even though computers were still predominantly used for administration purposes only, they did start teaching basic programming and simple word processing with keystroke commands, well before the introduction of the mouse.

1985 saw the last of the three term school years and it was also the year Michael married Shauna. Six years later, in 1991 they were blessed with their first child Aidan.

Not long after that, Michael started to think about taking on a deputy principal role. At this stage he still wasn’t interested in becoming a principal as he thought it involved too many speeches and too much PR.

In 1995, a year after Michael and Shauna welcomed their second child Brianna, the DP role at St Joseph’s Ferntree Gully, was advertised and Michael applied but was unsuccessful. This prompted him to think  maybe he’d been there for long enough and it was time to start looking elsewhere. 

So in 1996, the same year they welcomed their third child Tayla into the world, Michael moved with his young family to Leongatha in South Gippsland where he took up a deputy principal’s position at Mary MacKillop Catholic Regional College. Michael’s parents had a block of land there, so the area was well known to him and as a relatively new school he thought it would be great to be part of something so young. Shauna, less convinced, said she’d give it five years - but little did they know they would fall in love with the place and call it home for almost 2 decades!

During his time at Leongatha, Michael developed a fabulous working relationship with the principal, Mr Ed Carmody and they remained great friends until his recent passing. After three years, Mr Carmody left and Michael filled the Acting Principal role for the first half of 1999. Still unsure if he wanted the position permanently, he and Shauna tossed it around so much that he left it too long to post his application, and had to drive it to Warragul on the day it was due!

But by the grace of God he was appointed the principal’s role and remained there for another 16 years. During this time, he saw many changes to the school. With a growing student population, the school required a constant succession of building projects, which took up a great deal of his time. The school grew from 400 students to 600 when he left and progressed from  75% portable buildings to only 25%.

This period also saw huge changes and growth in computer technology. Michael clearly remembers the introduction of the internet in 1993 and a promotion in the Herald Sun which saw the school win its first 14.4kb/sec modem in 1997. At that stage the internet was only used for communication, not education, but how that has changed over the past 20 years!

In these early days in South Gippsland, Michael also studied his Master of Educational Leadership over a two year period. He went on to be one of five secondary school principals from around Victoria who together united the schools who had taken Mary MacKillop as their patron. This group became known as the AJASS which stood for Association of Josephite Affiliated Secondary Schools. AJASS has now grown to include many schools from every state and territory and even New Zealand. 

Michael also served many years on the Faith and Enrichment Committee of the Principals’ Association Victorian Catholic Secondary Schools (PAVCSS) as well as a period of time representing the Diocese of Sale Catholic Secondary Principals on the PAVCSS executive.

During the later years in South Gippsland he sowed the seeds of thought for another campus for Mary MacKillop College in neighbouring Wonthaggi. Since his leaving Mary MacKillop College, land has been purchased and hopefully the new campus will be built soon. This constant stream of building projects provided him with the perfect experience for what was to come in Echuca.

After 19 years dedicated to Mary MacKillop College it was time for a change of scene. He decided it was too long to stay on until he retired. His kids had all finished school so it felt like the right time to make a move.

During 2014, St Joseph’s College, Echuca was looking for a new principal and Michael felt fortunate to be appointed to the position. A decision that he has never looked back on. His 7 years leading St Joseph’s have been incredibly rewarding. He has been surrounded by an amazing leadership team, a wonderful staff and student body and a remarkable community. 

The Brigidine/Kildare Ministries value of ‘wonder’ is one that resonates deeply with Micahel when he reflects on his time at St Joseph’s and he believes the school truly lives up to its reputation of being hope-filled, joyful and progressive. A school that looks to the future, while also celebrating its long proud history and tradition, he says. In his application for the job he wrote about - ‘respecting the past, honouring the present and inspiring the future’ and this is exactly what he has done. 

Michael inherited a lively young staff at St Joseph’s on his arrival. There was significant staff turnover in the first three years and the new cohort was learning the ropes together. In November 2017, 46 out of 75 teachers were in their first five years of teaching at St Joseph’s. Nine of them in their first year of teaching and 23 of them in the first five years as teachers. No wonder one of the first things he discovered was an inconsistent application of policy because no one knew it well enough. This meant his focus shifted to improving processes and building staff capacity. Michael’s appointment also coincided with the Brigidine Sisters formally handing the school over to Kildare Education Ministries, requiring him to lead the school forward under a new banner. And then of course there was the opportunity to explore and eventually begin to develop a second campus which has added great excitement to his role over the past six years. That campus is due to welcome its first students in 2023.

This theme of growth and development has been a common thread in each of  the schools Michael has worked in. St Joseph’s in Ferntree Gully was two brick buildings in the middle of 13 acres, Mary MacKillop in Leongatha was one brick building surrounded by portable classrooms in the middle of a 50 acre paddock, and the new St Joseph’s site at Mt Terrick Rd in Echuca will be two brick buildings in the middle of an 80 acre paddock!

As his career comes to a close and Michael is invited to reflect, it is the parallels in the three charisms of the schools that have had the greatest impact on him. 

At St Joseph’s in Ferntree Gully it is, ‘Put into practice what you’ve learnt’; at Mary MacKillop in Leongatha it is ‘The wisdom of the Lord teaches us’; and at St Joseph’s College, Echuca it is ‘Strength and Kindliness.’

“All three have meant a lot to me at each individual school and so much of each school has followed me. And of course this is all underpinned by Jesus as the central character... but us mere mortals need other role models and that’s where your John Boscos, and your Mary MacKillops and Daniel Delanys come in to role model for us what Jesus wants us to do and how we should go about it,” Michael says. 

“The work that I’ve enjoyed the most was with the challenging students, the ones who were struggling to fit in, they were the ones who got under my skin. I put that down to the Salesians but all three charisms have a history of reaching out to those in need. All have their own twist on how to witness our Catholic values that I have tried to take carriage of at each school I’ve been at.”

Michael acknowledges his years spent as principal have meant less time with those struggling students, but says the joy he once got out of developing them, he now gets in developing staff and witnessing them get the best out of their students. There is no doubt he has missed the close interaction with students over recent years and while he has tried to get out of the office and take afternoon bus duty as often as he can, COVID restrictions and his illness have made this difficult. But in true Michael fashion, he continues to look on the practical side and is grateful to the leadership team and Kildare Ministries who have let him do what he needed to do to preserve his energy and slow his disease down.

This gratitude has always played a big role in his life and has stood by him since he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease a month before his 60th birthday, in March 2017.

While many in Michael’s position would be forgiven for feeling angry with the world, he considers himself fortunate because his condition appears to be slow moving. Doctors are currently treating the tremors with medication, but there is nothing they can do for the tiredness, which he describes is like “walking through waist deep water”, leaving him physically and mentally exhausted at the end of each day.

'Why not me, is more often what I ask? You don't have to look far around the world to be grateful. You look at the way people live in the Gaza Strip, you look at the people in Haiti where the earthquake is...I have lost friends to cancer and Motor Neurone Disease. I have nothing to complain about.

“My Mum and Dad are the sort of people that anytime you whinged, they’d say just have a look around, 'there but for the grace of God go I’.”

Michael has a broad streak of compassion, which anyone who knows him would attest to. It’s another strong value that has guided his life.

“I’ve always tried to do whatever I can do to have the three schools running as smoothly as possible for all the kids. One of the things about Catholic Education that appeals to me is that we're trying to educate the whole person. You can’t be a sporting school. You can't be an overly academic school. If you get too much pastoral care, you love them into mediocrity. If you get too much academia, you are not caring enough about the kids who are struggling. It's the gospel values that underpin getting that balance as right as you possibly can,” he said. 

This ties in with another teaching philosophy of Michael’s - he would love to find a measure for when someone is producing their best effort.

“I've often said to kids if you produce your best effort, and your best effort is a C, and you think your parents will give you grief when you take your report home, then I'll walk up the footpath with you and stick up for you. But if you're capable of getting a B when you only got a C, I'll be waiting with your parents to give you a hard time.”

While Michael argues there is no recipe that will work for everyone, he does believe the education system is getting better and what’s kept him going all these years has been the challenge of trying to do the best he can. 

“The ongoing challenge has always been wanting success for as many as possible in your care - whatever that looks like for each individual student. Success for some kids is getting straight As, for others it's getting to school three days a week. But what has always been a big one for me is never letting the reason become an excuse. Acknowledge the reasons and work with them.” 

To Michael’s delight, St Joseph’s is currently involved in a study with the University of Melbourne called New Metrics, which is exploring how to measure and report on things like resilience, compassion or personal best. It is his dream that one day we may have the answers.

In considering whether there’s a legacy he’d like to leave behind, Michael is resolute - “it's never been about me, it's only been about the students."

However he does acknowledge that because he’s had such a long time to prepare for his retirement, one thing he has focused on is building a high performing team to hand over to incoming principal Anne Marie Cairns and to set the College up for the next exciting phase  with the second campus. 

“The rest has just been Mike Delaney doing Mike Delaney’s job to the best of his ability with the gospel values underpinning it all,” he said. “I am just so grateful for every single opportunity I have had and every single person I've been lucky enough to work with - staff, students, families. I've been blessed.

“I’ve always felt like a round peg in a round hole. I’ve never woken up and thought, I don't want to go to work. Actually, I don’t go to work, I go to school.”

When Michael retires at the end of  2021, and moves back to South Gippsland with Shauna, he will have completed 43 years of service in Catholic education, and 23 of those years as a principal.

Only 6 other principals currently serving in Catholic secondary education in Victoria have served as principals as long, or longer than him.

This achievement, he believes, has earned him a bit of a break from people, and so in March next year he will set off on his very own pilgrimage. With Shauna as his road crew, he intends to walk 1000km in 30 days as a sort of Australian ‘Camino’. At this stage a ‘mudmap’ that starts around Echuca and finishes at the mouth of the Murray river via Portland and Penola.

A fitting way to round out an extraordinary career of ‘meeting people at the water pump’ - or in other words, of building relationships with compassion and gratitude.