STAFF STORY
Our Deputy Principal Teaching and Learning is a true Renaissance woman. Jacqueline Pugh is proficient across a number of fields, with career and learning experiences acquired across the country and overseas.
Jacqueline is an educational leader, an art teacher, a listener, an adventurer. She has been a business owner, a hospitality worker and a restaurant manager. She has worked in London, Cambridge, Whistler, Melbourne, the Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands. Jacqueline has lived in rural Australia as well as in our cities and as a child attended both Catholic and state schools. Rounding out her education, Jacqueline is a lifelong learner with tertiary studies at the Universities of NSW, Melbourne and at The University of New England. Her degrees include a Master of Instructional Leadership, a Bachelor of Teaching (Visual Arts) and Postgraduate Diplomas in Psychology and History.
As a teacher Jacqueline is qualified to teach across departments. Who better than a polymath to direct our teaching and learning! As an educational leader she has led the teaching departments of arts, languages, PDHPE and TAS. She also has experience as a head of house and a head of middle school. At one school she even led camping adventures with her Year 11 students, driving the bus, hiking, erecting tents and cooking over the campfire.
All of this experience she brings to Santa Sabina in a role where she is analysing our curriculum in scope and sequence from Prep to Year 12 as well as supporting our teachers in their pedagogy (the art and science of teaching).
‘I want to ensure the learning journey from Prep to Year 12 flows well. My role includes assessment and tracking our data’, she says.
She is also Year 9’s Visual Arts teacher, which she loves.
‘I’m so excited to still be teaching. In a role like mine you just have to have your finger on what’s happening in the classroom. There are so many creative ways in every subject to ensure kids are getting growth. My students have come to each lesson so enthusiastic to learn. In the art room students can talk and express who they are – I love getting to know the individuals and quirkiness of my Year 9 students.’
Jacqueline chose teaching because she loves working with people.
‘Schools are full of people, people who can inspire’, she explains. Running the café in the renowned Berkelouws bookshop in Oxford St Paddington, Jacqueline employed university students and other young people, often in their first jobs.
‘I loved seeing them develop and what they could do,’ she says.
As a St Vincent’s College Potts Point student Jacqueline’s teachers greatly inspired her. It was also the time of her first visits to Santa Sabina – playing hockey and softball for Vinnies on our oval.
Jacqueline describes herself as a workaholic, reading the latest educational literature on what is going to make a difference to children in the classroom. She also finds time to read autobiographies of inspiring people and to create her own art, preferring painting or drawing en plein air.
And she is passionate about the Italian Renaissance, a time of cultural achievements and advancement in literature, the arts, science and technology, the important and fervent rebirth following the Middle Ages.
All in all, Jacqueline Pugh is a great fit with Santa Sabina, with her vast experience, diverse interests and her eagerness to listen to and support our young people.
