Leader of readers

By Casey Neill
MT DANDENONG Primary School’s John Burgan is passionate about helping the system’s most vulnerable students.
Mr Burgan transferred to the hilltop school in 1981 and teaches reading recovery three mornings a week.
“Dealing with these little kids is just fabulous. It’s something that I love doing,” he said.
The program aims to catch students who struggle with reading early on.
“Not wait until they get to Grade 3 or 4 or 5 and decide they can’t read,” he said.
“Usually at the beginning of the year they don’t know single sounds or very few words.”
“I just teach them the alphabet and teach them basics to decode words.”
Mr Burgan said ‘a bit of a push along’ ensured they wouldn’t fall behind.
“You don’t expect them to just walk away and they’ve got it, but a lot of those things mill around and by the end of the year they’re reading,” he said.
“That really is a terrific reward.”
The Education Department recently recognised Mr Burgan’s commitment with a 45-year service award, but his teaching career began half a century ago at Burwood Teachers’ College.
“I’ve had a couple of years off along the way,” he said.
One of Mr Burgan’s first positions was head teacher in Bullengarook East – ‘a little country school half way between Gisborne and Baccus Marsh’.
The newlywed and his wife Bev in 1965 moved from suburban Melbourne to a town only recently hooked up to the electricity grid.
“But the phone was still one of those wind-up jobs, and you had to go through the lady at the post office and that closed down at 5.30pm,” he said.
Mr Burgan soon took full time study leave to complete a Special Teacher’s Certificate at Melbourne Teacher’s College – a move that would shape his career.
“That’s what got me interested in the special education field,” he said.
He went on to teach at Marathon Special School for the physically handicapped for three years.
“The ones that really tugged at my heartstrings were the kids with muscular dystrophy,” he said.
“You’d see them walking before Christmas holidays, and they’d come back and they’d be in a wheelchair, and they’d slowly deteriorate.”
Mr Burgan established a special education unit during a stint at Doncaster East Primary School.
“That was a good challenge,” he said.
He then resigned from teaching in 1976 to take up a position as marketing manager in a family business.
“I really thought, ‘What am I doing this for? I really like teaching’,” he said.
“But you’ve got to get out to get a look at it from the outside and then you put it in perspective.”
Mr Burgan began his association with Mt Dandenong Primary School when his eldest son Andrew began his schooling 35 years ago and his daughter Carolyne and son Matthew soon followed.
Mr Burgan served on the school committee as a parent and a staff member. He said helping to secure a major upgrade for the school in the 1990s was a career highlight.
The redevelopment moved up and down a State Government priority list for several years.
“We thought bugger this, we’ll go political,” Mr Burgan said. Former students fondly recall Mr Burgan’s mountain top bushwalks.
“Some of them say ‘we remember the walks Mr Burgan, you used to flog us’, but they loved it,” he said.