In January this year, one of Boorowa Central School’s longest serving teachers made the decision to retire from teaching.

Mrs Debra Eustace has been a teacher within the NSW Department of Education for 44 years, most of which were here at our school.

Debra filled a variety of roles at Boorowa Central School in her time, finishing up as Teacher Librarian.

Debra began teaching in Sydney at schools such as Sydney Girls High, Ryde High and Matraville High between 1980 and April of 1984.

With interest as high as 18 percent, Debra and her husband William made the decision to move to the country in 1985.

They found a small property in Rye Park where they could settle down and explore their love of horses, living in their horse float whilst building a kit home with help from their new neighbours.

Around this time, William travelled to China and the South Pacific with the Navy and when home, would commute to Canberra each day.

Debra started teaching at Boorowa Central School in 1985, around the time the Hall was built.

The whole region was in a drought that lasted 10 years so when there was a short period of rain, the dust turned to mud and staff all had to wear gum boots to get through the mud to get to their classrooms of which Debra’s at first was a demountable classroom.

Soon after, Debra was assigned what she described as ‘a lovely isolated wooden classroom’ near the principal’s house, which was where all secondary history lessons were taught.

Debra loved this classroom and recalls many lessons where she recreated scenes from History with her students.

Debra’s main areas of teaching were English and History. Several of her students received top results in the Higher School Certificate in Ancient History.

The K-12 co-ed nature of Boorowa Central School was fascinating for Debra having only taught in large city schools previously.

The school put Debra through a University course in Gifted and Talented education which she used to create a regional Public Speaking Competition in Boorowa.

The competition attracted schools from Goulburn to Queanbeyan, Yass to Gundagi, Quandialla to Cowra, Canowindra, Crookwell and more.

This competition was hosted by Boorowa Central School for 21 years, with all competitions supported by 2LF Radio, Boorowa Rotary, Boorowa’s Country Women’s Association, and Apex Boorowa.

The competition was so large that the secondary school students were either competing or audience members as all the available classrooms were used for the competition.

In 1997, Debra won a NeiTA (National Excellence in Teaching Award) for the regional public speaking competition.

Being able to explain to the press, when receiving the award, what a K-12 school was fascinating.

None had ever heard of such a school. Debra felt it was a great opportunity for her to explain the advantage of our school being able to influence a student’s complete learning from age 5 to 18 as, like a parent, we could build their love of learning as we had a personal influence in their first 13 years of education.

One of Debra’s proudest achievements when at Boorowa Central School was running the school’s debating teams for more than a decade.

Most of the students that were in these teams travelled to and competed (often successfully) in regional competitions, went on to receive excellent results in their HSC English, Ancient and Modern History examinations having learnt the skills of argumentative discussions in the school’s debating teams.

In 2006, the Department of Education and Boorowa Central School supported Debra to go back to university to earn a degree in Teacher Librarianship.

She completed this course over 1 year, whilst teaching full-time and supporting her daughter navigate year 9.

Debra felt that this was an amazing opportunity to work with students from Kindergarten to their High School years, building an interest in their growing imagination and literacy skills as well as their knowledge in learning how to use evidence and research in all their subjects, especially History.

In 2011 Debra was awarded the Pride of Australia award for Public Speaking.

Under her tutelage Boorowa Central School teams competed in eisteddfods with some ending up winning at National levels, others being State winners.

A fond memory of her time at our school is Debra’s coaching of teams for the Model United Nation regional competitions, thanks to Boorowa Rotary.

Students competed in teams, representing a country, debating United Nation resolutions in old parliament house in Canberra.

More than 100 private and public schools competed in this competition annually.

As a result of this program, our students were invited to meet many Ambassadors at Embassies.

One of Debra’s students was selected for the National Australia Museum’s ‘Talk Back Classroom’ which led to a trip to Korea where he was on Korean Television.

Debra is very proud of all her students from her many years of teaching at Boorowa Central School and is thrilled when one of them stops to say hello in public.

She fondly recalled a situation when she was visiting the War Memorial in Canberra when a young mum called out.

The young lady turned out to be an ex-Boorowa Central School student who would often tell her children that she was her favourite History teacher, citing that Debra was ‘the lady who helped her become a great public speaker and a prosecutor.’

I wish Debra all the best for her retirement and thank her for her many years of service to our school and the wider school community.

GRAHAM JONES - PRINCIPAL BOOROWA CENTRAL SCHOOL