Sports teacher Mr O’Dwyer has recently celebrated 20 years of service at Cobram Anglican Grammar School, a monumental achievement given the school is only 25 years old.
“I’m really proud to have that longevity,” he said.
“In any occupation, I think that’s pretty special and it says a lot about the place.
“It’s been a great ride, but it hasn’t been an easy one.
“When I started the basketball court just had the old pipe fence around it and our sports store room was a shipping container.
“Now we’ve got a fully operational gym and a little sports store in there, so it makes me really proud knowing where we’ve come from and where we’re at right now.”
During Mr O’Dwyer’s time at the school the number of students has more than tripled, from just over 120 when he started to 400 now.
Mr O’Dwyer didn’t always want to be a teacher; in some ways, it was a stroke of luck that he found the calling.
“I always thought I wanted to get into sports administration, and I got a job over at Sporties doing exactly that,” he said.
“I got involved with a girl who was a school teacher and started helping out and connecting with kids ... then I thought teaching might be my game.”
Mr O’Dwyer went back to school as a mature-age student to study teaching and years later moved with his wife back to Barooga, where he taught for two years.
When an executive position came up at the Cobram Anglican Grammar school, he decided to “throw his hat in the ring”.
Unsure of how well the job interview went, Mr O’Dwyer was both surprised and happy to receive the phone call telling him he got the position as head of junior school.
“I was in that role for a couple of years, then went into director of students, then back into head of junior school and then ended up getting the head of sport, which they didn’t have to twist my arm too much because I’m very sporty,” he said.
Mr O’Dwyer has remained in that role for the past 13 years and has been a driving force in the introduction of a sports academy.
“At our end-of-year awards we present sports awards to the kids who have reached state level or higher, and we were handing out close to 30 awards on a yearly basis,” he said.
“So we thought these awards were suggesting that we've got some pretty talented little sports people.
“The drawback about living in an area like we do is that because we're so remote ... everything’s down in Melbourne.
“So we thought, ‘well, how about we provide a program where we can bring these strategies to the kids’.
“It’s a program designed to help students who are excelling in their chosen sports to go to that next level, and it brings that training to them rather than having to travel.”
Mr O’Dwyer said the most rewarding thing about his job was “watching our sporting prowess grow in the competition”.
“When we go to these inter-school competitions and I watch our teams and individuals do extraordinarily well, it gives me a lot of pride and satisfaction,” he said.
When asked what advice he would give to aspiring teachers for a long and successful career, he said: “You have to enjoy what you do, have good rapport with the kids and just enjoy the journey.”
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