Farewell to Marilyn
When Marilyn came to Preshil in 2010 it was a school that was a little bit stuck; one foot firmly planted in the past - a truly spectacular past - and one foot hovering in the air, a little unsure as to where to land.
There was a chorus of clamorous voices keen to shape the direction of the school. Frank Moore had established working parties to help resolve the issue. In my third or fourth year at Preshil I was involved in one of these groups - the creatively titled Working Party B. Our mandate was to take the pulse of the current trends and forces in society, culture and education and try to imagine a future in which Preshil might best be able to honour its rich history while continuing to offer a progressive path for young people. The group consisted of staff (ex and current), parents (ex and current) and some alumni. What a task! I found an email in which one participant of the Working Party referred to it as a “palaver”, and as I sit here and look up the definition of that marvellous word, I find that one of the options is to “talk unproductively and at length”, which seems to fit my recollections of the time rather well. This is less a reflection on Frank and his vision than it is on the near impossibility of the task that was at hand.
Working Party A, however, was a success. It had a more reflective role, a summation of the school’s past, out of which emerged the wonderful and seminal Courage document.
On top of the issue of its existential identity, Preshil had more mundane issues holding it back; declining enrolments, money shortages and a list of serious OH&S issues.
What was needed was a strong-willed individual to imagine a path into the future and to set the course to get there come hell or high water. The school had known people like this in the past. I’ve heard Margaret E Lyttle referred to, cheekily and lovingly, as a benevolent dictator. I never had the pleasure of meeting Mug, though I saw her in the distance a number of times, so I won’t weigh in on the veracity of this statement.
Not long into Marilyn’s tenure at the school, she, along with the School Council, released a road map for the school which would set a clear path forward. Preshil would adopt the International Baccalaureate programmes to complement what we already did so well. Preshil has first and foremost been a school that embraced individuality and celebrated difference. It sought to meet the learner where they were at in their learning journey, rather than impose some ‘one size fits all’ framework. It is a school based on relationships. Marilyn would often refer to the idea, attributed to Einstein, that “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” This goes to the heart of what Preshil education is about. Recognising the individual’s genius and coaxing it out. The IB, with its focus on concepts and skills rather than uniform curriculum content, was a natural fit. The decision was not without its critics. There were fears that the IB was too academic or too elitist. Marilyn maintained that we could deliver a Preshil IB that would make it accessible to all students, and so it has panned out.
The school received its accreditation to deliver the IB Middle Years Programme in 2016, the Diploma Programme in 2018 and the Primary Years Programme in 2019. The first brave cohort graduated the Diploma in 2019 and this year’s cohort has tackled unimaginable obstacles to do the same.
Earlier this year Bob Dylan released a song called I Contain Multitudes. I guess we all do and Marilyn is no exception. Apart from plotting an historically consistent, ideologically grounded and education based path forward for the school, she has also spent immense energy in beautifying its environment. At the Secondary School, she has undertaken several building projects including the beautiful and utilitarian library and the incredible renovation of Kalimna as the IB Diploma Hub. To borrow an overused phrase from Grand Designs, she used space and light to create space and light. Indeed. She is also a natural gardener and has spent many a weekend and school holiday working in the grounds and with the grounds staff to transform the physical environment of Preshil. At the start of the new school term it was not uncommon to receive an exasperated “humph” from the grounds staff when I asked if they had had a break. It was usually followed by something along the lines of, “No break for us, we were hard at work, she had another idea!” The sum of these ideas is the beautiful learning and working environment that is Preshil today. She is also practical; she’s still the only one who knows how to turn on and off the halogen light atop Blackhall!
Marilyn encouraged teachers to pursue their ideas and embrace the motto of “courage” in the classroom. From this were born all sorts of wonderful educational opportunities for young people at Preshil. Teachers were encouraged to give the students agency and students were encouraged to have “the courage to question”. “Why are we learning this?” would be a phrase to make many a teacher shudder in many schools around the country. Marilyn encouraged the students to ask this of their teachers, and told teachers that they’d better have a good answer. Learning should be connected, in some meaningful way, to the lives of the students, otherwise, what is the point?
Now, I want to be careful with this next metaphor. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well 2020 has thrown so many spanners in the various workings of the social and economic fabric of our world, that the new tricks were forced upon us all. Marilyn, who must have been eyeing retirement as the year commenced, can only have been aghast as the calamitous events of 2020 began to unfold. This was meant to be the downhill run but instead she has had to steer the school through arguably its most challenging time, while keeping staff supported and students provided with a level of education that they have come to expect. And here we are. The students are back, Year 12s have completed their IB Diploma, the various transitions from year level to year level have taken place and staff are gearing up for one of the most well-earned breaks of all time. And Marilyn? Marilyn is going to ride off into the sunset to be a grandmother and watch Grand Designs and do some gardening and read some books and listen to some music and cook some marvellous food (oh yes, she’s an incredible cook too!).
The role of Principal encompasses a lot. A multitude perhaps (cheers Bob!). In some ways it is a caretaker position, in the truest sense of the word. You are handed this precious thing to look after, to grow and to nourish and then at some point you pass it on for someone else to do the same. Now I’m no physicist, but I have a feeling that one of Newton’s laws of motion or thermo dynamics or some such thing suggests that interactions between things leave indelible marks on each other in some form. I am sure that Marilyn will take a piece of Preshil with her always, and in the same way she has left some of herself here. But more importantly, she has looked after this precious thing, she has nourished it and it has grown. It is ready to be passed on to the new caretakers to do the same.
I’d like to extend much heartfelt gratitude to Marilyn for the years spent at the helm of what surely remains one of Australia’s best schools.
John Collins
Teacher of Year 12 History
john.collins@preshil.vic.edu.au