Here’s what people are saying about Michele
Testimonial: Julie Christopoulos, Senior Advisor, Independent Schools Victoria
Michele is a gifted motivator and inspiring leader who has, through her actions, guided others to aim for and achieve their very best!
Her words of wisdom and inspiration, has provided me with the knowledge and confidence to constantly aspire for the best I possibly can in areas of education and beyond.Michele’s insight included the ability to see the diverse skills and attributes in her staff thus mentoring, coaching and modeling how to use these natural abilities to develop high performance teams.Collaboration and interdependency was evident in her approach, which successfully created high performance teams and developed a culture that promoted understanding, effective interaction, appreciation of complementary individual team members skills, leading to improved educational outcomes.
During times of change, in the highly changing educational arena, Michele was able to probe for what was important, listen carefully and then provide direction and suggestions for actions after collaborative discussions with her staff.
In my role as a Senior Advisor, Michele’s teachings, advice and role modelling, are always my support and guidance as I currently support and guide in the educational arena.
Testimonial: Dr Rebecca Cooper, Lecturer, Department of Education, Monash University
I was lucky enough to work with Michele Bernshaw in the very early stages of my career as a secondary school teacher.
She is an inspirational leader who was able to guide and support me (and other staff members) through the many areas of development as a teacher.
She fostered constant engagement with evolving curriculum and pedagogical changes by ensuring that we held ourselves, and by extension the school community, to high standards of educational professionalism.Michele also inspired individual teachers to strive to truly be life long learners, she offered guidance with professional learning plans, support to teach across a range of areas and opportunities for collaboration with other teachers to develop and discuss innovative teaching strategies.
Michele was never afraid to support a new, exciting idea, especially if it fostered learning opportunities for both the staff and students under her leadership.
What I appreciated most about working with Michele was her ability to support individuals to grow personally while still guiding the entire school to great success through the development of innovative programs as well as the constant improvement of student results.
Testimonial: Mark Harrison, President of The King David School Council
As a member of The King David School Council from 2007, and as President of Council from 2012, I had the pleasure of working with Michele until her retirement in 2014.During Michele’s tenure, the School expanded from a fledgling school to a leading K-12 Independent school.
Michele drove an environment of excellence that encouraged her staff and students to extract the best of themselves, and ultimately led to the school being recognised as one of the leading Independent schools in Victoria. Under Michele’s leadership, VCE results consistently placed the School in the top echelon. At the same time our core values of inclusiveness and community were never compromised.
The King David School became recognised for “punching above its weight” as compared to many of the more established, larger private schools.
During the more than fourteen years that Michele was Principal of KDS, she drove significant expansion in our curriculum with the introduction of our Philosophy and Wellbeing programs, oversaw our continual pursuit of excellence in the areas of Performing and Visual Arts, introduced a broad linguistic offering and supported creativity in our Science programs that resulted in both national and international recognition.