One cannot spend over 50 years of a life being frst as a student teacher, then a teacher, a system-wide science curriculum consultant, a vice-principal, a school principal and fnally as an academic at various levels in four Australian universities, ending with an invited appointment at the prestigious G8 University of Adelaide, without some refection: time giving over to some thought to the many challenges faced in – or escaping from – my life as an adolescent who at 15 years of age had been sexually abused, sufered in-school social-class discrimination and then drafted into unskilled labouring work.

After being denied a high school education, then seemingly locked in a regional timber industry as a labourer, for me, life was hardly coming up roses. Becoming precariously positioned on the razor's edge and becoming increasingly aware that I was born on and had been living on the wrong side of the fence in a small New South Wales country town, I had some hard decisions to make, and with the help of two marvellous people, I was fortunate enough to be born twice. Particularly, now in my retirement, thinking how I might understand this and then how I might pass these experiences onto paraprofessionals, student teachers and teachers in the school education profession of subsequent generations became almost an obsession.

These memoirs were written with academics, lecturers, student-teachers and senior secondary students undertaking such courses as English Extension in mind.