About Lisa Hill

This LisaHillSchoolStuff blog is the professional blog of Lisa Hill, Director of Curriculum, and the teacher-librarian at Mossgiel Park PS, Endeavour Hills, an outer suburb of south-eastern Melbourne.  In 2010 I am Acting Assistant Principal, but that’s an aberration – and I hope soon to be back with my students, sharing my love of books and reading…

My current professional interests are

• developing the LisaHillSchoolStuff wiki as a kid-friendly resource;
• developing longer sequences of topics to foster deep learning;
• integrating ICT into library lessons, and exploring with Web 2.0;
• working with professional learning teams to enhance teaching and learning for the 21st century. Integrating Web 2.0 into the curriculum is part of that.

Lisa, President of VILTA, with award from the Indonesian Consulate

 

I started teaching in 1979 at Bentleigh West PS, then became a Coordinator at the Ardoch and Bayside Teachers’ Centre while on study leave at Melbourne University. After that it was Cheltenham Heights PS, Beaumaris PS, Springvale West PS, Heatherton PS, and then to Mossgiel Park, where I’ve been since 1994. I’ve been a classroom teacher, an ESL teacher, and while I was a teacher of Indonesian, I was also President of VILTA, the Victorian Indonesian Language Teachers Association. 

My presidency oversaw the modernisation of the association, including completing its incorporation, introducing professional accounting standards for the Treasurer, making constitutional changes to improve efficiency, facilitating an effective presence on the web, and outsourcing services such as production of its newsletter to reduce the workload on the committee.  Standards for student competitions were brought into line with statewide curriculum, and eligbility and rules were clarified to make judging more fair.  More importantly, VILTA extended its support to fledgling teachers of Indonesian in primary schools, where the teaching of Languages Other Than English (LOTE) was newly compulsory.  Units of work and resources, assessment techniques and teaching tips were routinely shared through the newsletter and at the annual conference.  Many of these achievements were accomplished by the committee at its annual residential weekend during the summer holidays, an innovation I introduced to manage the workload – because we were all practising teachers and time poor.  It was an exciting time to be a teacher of Indonesian, and although I enjoyed moving back to classroom teaching and now love my present role as librarian, I consider my work as President of VILTA a highlight of my career. 

I’m also a professional writer and publisher. I have written  articles for professional journals and magazines like Classroom, and short stories published in anthologies: Up the Creek; Victoria: Places to See, Places to Be; and A Rich Inheritance.

I’m the author of Indonesia, a non-fiction text for students, published by Pascal Press and I’m the author/publisher of the Word Puzzles for the Indonesian Classroom series of teacher resource books.

Since becoming interested in Web 2.0 as an educational tool, I also maintain the Mossgiel Park PS Blog, and my class (library) blog, the MPPS LiBlog.

Visit my companion website for lovers of Australian Literature, ANZ LitLovers, or my travel blog about our trips to Europe and Vietnam, Travels with Tim and Lisa .

You might also like to visit my husband’s website for the Australian Cotton Club Orchestra, or my son’s website for ABOC IT Consulting & Cycle coaching.