Toyota Community Trust Has partnered With Teach For Australia To Provide $300,000 Per Year Over Three Years To Help Support Teachers In STEM Education

October 28, 2024

Toyota Community Trust has partnered with Teach For Australia to provide nearly $1m in funding over the next three years, to help support its programs that develop teachers to empower the next generation of innovators.

The Toyota Community Trust Fund is focused on furthering education of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and the announcement comes as the world celebrates its educators on World Teachers Day on Friday 25 October.

The partnership will see the Toyota Community Trust fund the Teacher Training program, providing teachers with a focus on strengthening skills, managing health and wellbeing, and training on critical topics such as First Nations education.

This funding will support 119 STEM-specialist educators who are completing the program, and who will reach and teach an estimated 10,200 students across the country.

Teach For Australia Founder and CEO, Melodie Potts Rosevear OAM thanked Toyota Community Trust for its support and said it would help the organisation train high-quality STEM teachers that were in critical shortage across country, particularly for schools in regional and remote areas.

“We’re thrilled to team up with Toyota Community Trust, a shining example of corporate leadership in the quest to advance educational equity,” Ms Potts Rosevear said.

“Their support enables us to deploy more exceptional STEM teachers who are able to breathe life into their subjects, making a tangible difference for their students.”

Award-winning Agriculture and Business Management Teacher at Goroke P-12 College (VIC) Louise Hobbs knows firsthand the difficulties many students face in remote communities.

“Having grown up in Victoria’s Wimmera Region I had to move to a different school to complete my VCE and pursue my dream of studying at Monash University,” Ms Hobbs said.

“When I graduated, I decided to give back to my community by teaching in a country school, where I aim to make STEM ‘come alive’ for my students.”

Ms Hobbs believes it’s critical to innovate in her teaching practice to help bridge inequity gaps for her students. Her commitment to providing as many opportunities for her students as possible ensures students feel they are capable of anything.

“It shows them that they are receiving a fantastic education here in country schools and gives them a real confidence boost.” Ms Hobbs says.[SM1]

After two decades as an engineer, STEM teacher Gregg Barker was drawn to a career in the classroom through Teach For Australia because he wanted to inspire students into meaningful careers.

“I aim to bring real-world experience into the classroom at Casuarina Senior College in Darwin, and teach my students skills to prepare them for the workplace,” Mr Barker said.

“The world has changed from sitting in a classroom, writing notes in your exercise book, so I’ve really enjoyed having the opportunity to teach STEM where I think that’s teaching them the skills that they’ll need in modern workplaces,” he said.

Teach For Australia was founded in 2009 to further its belief that every child deserves greater choice for the future. Since then, Teach For Australia has recruited, developed, supported and empowered over 1600+ great teachers, who work in hundreds of schools providing inspired learning opportunities for more than 650,000 children in communities experiencing disadvantage.

Toyota Community Trust Chair, Mike Rausa said Toyota was proud to support Teach For Australia and was committed to making quality education accessible to all.

“Toyota is incredibly proud to partner with Teach For Australia and play a part in its continuing dedication to providing support to teachers serving low socio-economic communities,” Mr Rausa said.

“High-quality STEM education is vital for Australia as a country to help develop the next-generation of innovators, thinkers, scientists and engineers and we need to ensure that every child that engages with that, has the best opportunity to succeed.

“Through our Toyota Community Trust, we aim to provide long term benefits to the Australian community by encouraging and enabling more young Australians to pursue further study and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to benefit all Australians,” he said.