Get to know your board members!: Brent Banham

What inspired you to become a science teacher?  

Science enriches lives. It is one of the best ways to appreciate all of creation and our place in it. Science is one pathway for a joyful life!  

On the flipside, scientific thinking is important in a society that is full of crazy, self-interested, deceitful decision making and misinformation. Everyone deserves to know, or at least respect, how to think scientifically.  

Most important to me, science teaching is an honest way to earn a living. 

As an aside, the photograph shows me next to a bust of Howard Florey, one of the pioneers of penicillin. Florey went to a South Australian school! Isn’t that amazing – all of the changes to health and to medicine that flowed from his insight. All of the lives that have been saved! Our students need to hear of contributions such as this and to recognise the importance.  

How many years have you been teaching?  

I started teaching in 1989 – the year Taylor Swift was born.  A late starter, somehow she has edged past me in terms of audience size. Despite my want for global success, teaching has been good to me. At first, I used it as a way of travelling abroad (for anyone interested that way, it can be just as easy to find work overseas as it is in Australia). Next, I had the chance to work at resourcing the gap that exists between secondary and tertiary science education. Since then, I have had the chance to work in lots of different SA secondary schools.      

Why did you join the SASTA Board?  

It is a privilege to be on the SASTA Board. SASTA is the single most important organisation for science teaching in South Australia. There is a lot going on in science education in South Australia that needs to be shared and SASTA has the mission to do this.  

Are there any other committees / organisations you are involved with?  

Yes. But one thing at a time suits best and I don’t go looking for such things. Nonetheless, at various times I have been an elected member, City of West Torrens; a representative on a Public Housing Board; Secretary of the SA Churchill Fellowship Committee.  

For around 10 years I worked in Community Radio and I value my long-term membership of Trees for Life and Fauna Rescue. With regard to science teaching, I maintain memberships in several science, chemistry and physics teaching Associations abroad.     

If you could travel back in time and attend any scientific discovery or experiment in history, which one would it be, and why?  

I gave this some though, but I would stick to the here and now. There is more going on now in science than ever before and I only lack the time and imagination to keep up with it all. I think I would have liked to live next door to James Lovelock to feed off his creative and independent mind and his relentless energy. 

If you were to sum up your teaching philosophy in one sentence, what would it be? 

Keep learning! There is a multitude of different ways to teach and appreciate science!