By Sahar Foladi
Jenny MacKay retired assistant principal from Dandenong North Primary School was awarded the Living Treasure award on Australia Day.
The MacKay’s career in teaching has earned them a lifetime of recognition, reputation, admiration and fulfilment.
“I suppose the first word that comes to my mind is, I feel humbled but the same time incredibly grateful that somebody has seen what you do or seen it as a value to it,’ Ms MacKay said.
Mr MacKay is also incredibly proud of his wife for her achievement.
“He gets a lot of attention and I just like to be quite but he was very proud and happy,” Ms MacKay laughed.
For her this award marks her success in what she had set out to achieve for the school and community.
“We have children achieving incredibly well in terms of their education we’ve got really skilled teachers who’ve developed over the years because of the programs in place and support they’ve received.”
Mr and Ms Mackay have been in the school for 39 years and 36 years respectively.
All up, their teaching careers have spanned 60 years and 45 years, they’ve achieved a lot throughout these years but Ms MacKay said she’s most proud of the Afghani Mother’s group program the school had established.
“It’s a difficult experience for people to come to a whole new way of life, language, leave your family behind, feel accepted and part of a community where you feel you can contribute.”
The Afghani Mother group is a collective collaboration of individuals in the school who’ve helped to develop the program for more than 10 years now.
“From schools perspective we’ve tried to work hard on trying to educate the mums so they’re able to help their children with learning and understand what they’re doing.
We’ve got our multi-cultural aide our EAL teachers and of course the parents that have been with us over the years, they’re all part of what we have become.”
The program saw roughly 225 mothers attend zoom sessions during covid to educate themselves on how to help and support their children’s education at home.
“There was too many so we had multiple sessions on zoom. We had this amazing social connection with mums who found it so difficult to have their children home and to support them.”
Ms MacKay said although she has retired she will continue her works with the program so more mothers could find it self-sustaining.
“I suppose that program is my greatest joy and something I want to continue with so more group of mothers can be part of it.”
The husband and wife retired in 2022 and they left the school with yet another one of their achievement, which was the MacKay Gymnasium.
The gymnasium is a happy ending to their decades of service to the community and school although the duo will stay in touch with the school and the community.
The school has named the new gymnasium in the honour of its legendary former leaders and is scheduled for completion early this year.
