By Margaret Maccoll
Sunshine Beach State High School teacher Brendan Burgess last week won the National Excellence in Teaching Award after being nominated for it in the community.
This year there were 60 NEiTA award winners from 1450 nominations across the country and winners will now compete for 12 national prizes of $5000 each.
Mr Burgess has taught English and Humanities at Sunshine Beach for the past 20 years and has co-authored two textbooks for English and History.
Mr Burgess likes to create classrooms that are fun, safe and where music is included as background to study, in group participation or where students show up “for a jam before school”.
He promotes the idea of being gifted and dedicated, involving hard work to gain success and has a theory that each class develops its own sub-culture that should be embraced by teachers.
