After 60 years in education, Vivienne Bolam's passion for student success is strong

Forbes High School teacher Vivienne Bolam has spent more than six decades shaping young minds, and the joy of seeing her students thrive continues to drive her. At the end of last year, Mrs Bolam was formally recognised for more than 50 years of service with the NSW Department of Education - a milestone celebrated alongside 50 other staff members, including teachers, principals and support staff, at a special dinner at NSW Parliament House. The evening brought together colleagues from across the state, with guests enjoying entertainment and musical performances by Sydney students. Mrs Bolam attended with her daughter and now colleague Georgie Price, Forbes High librarian, discovering they were seated among several mother-and-daughter pairs. Yet even that remarkable 50-year milestone only tells part of the story. It has been 62 years since the then Vivienne Kelly first stepped into a classroom in Tullamore in 1964 - a very different teaching environment to today. Back then, more than 40 students filled a single classroom, warmed by pot-belly stoves in winter and enduring summer without fans or air conditioning. There was milk in bottles for recess but no calculators, no library, no relief teachers - just chalk, dusters and worksheets copied using jelly pads. Since those early days, Mrs Bolam has taught every stage of learning, from preschool through to Year 12, and across a wide range of subjects including primary, secondary art, physical education and mathematics. She has championed student curiosity, encouraging young people to pursue their interests and take ownership of their learning. “(I) Let them be interested in the things they’re interested in - let them explore for themselves - and they appreciated it so much,” she said. “The satisfaction of being able to create a happy classroom is enormous - where everyone just gets on and does the right thing." Her career has evolved alongside education itself. In 1978, when Tullamore Central School could not recruit a specialist maths teacher, she stepped in to teach all secondary mathematics - remembering that the overhead projector was exciting new technology for the classroom at the time. “It was lovely - I met kids I’d had in year one and two again in secondary, and back we went to work together,” she recalled. Then Vivienne and her husband Malcolm welcomed their son Nicholson and daughter Georgina, and she spent five happy years at her farm home with her young family. When Georgie was a toddler Tullamore Preschool reached out and the community appointed Mrs Bolam their preschool director and teacher. She had six happy years in that role before 1991 brought new choices: to return to a permanent role at Tullamore or work in learning support in Tullamore and Trundle. With her children's input, Mrs Bolam returned to Tullamore Central where she worked right through to 2018 while studying intensively with plans to specialise in the essential skill of reading. That brought her to Forbes High School in 2019. After working across all age groups, Mrs Bolam wanted to make a real difference for those year 7 students at the beginning of high school. “They really start to realise how handy it is to be a good reader,” she said. Now specialising in reading support, Mrs Bolam has developed a comprehensive reading improvement program built on decades of experience and research. The program helps students break down words, understand language rules and build confidence - even tackling subject-specific vocabulary, including hundreds of secondary maths terms. “There are heaps of rules - and there are heaps of words that don’t follow the rules because they came from French or Greek,” she said. Students progress at their own pace, often achieving remarkable results. “It’s magic - some go up two years in six months," Mrs Bolam said. Her passion for literacy stems from a deep understanding of its impact. “You change their lives,” she said. “It makes their education possible for them.”