She was at a crossroads. Despite wanting nothing more than to help young kids on the journey of learning, she was burnt out.  

After 15 years of primary school teaching, a heart-broken Gabbie resigned. 

“I had reached a point where I would be able to get all my work done if the kids didn’t come to school,” Gabbie said. “And that is just nuts. Nothing about that statement makes sense and yet that is the reality of teaching right now.”

To mark the occasion she grabbed an excerpt from the essay she had submitted to the Griffith Review and posted it on her Facebook page. Before she knew what was happening her post had gone viral. 

Now around a year after her post, which received more than 1700 shares, Gabbie has received some well earned accolade from the media industry. 

Gabbie has been named as a finalist in this year’s Walkley Awards for excellence in Australian journalism. 

Her essay, titled Teaching Australia, falls under the Feature Writing Short (under 4,000 words) category and now Gabbie is standing along side well-known journalists Ben Doherty from Guardian Australia and Julia Medew from The Age.

“I am still in disbelief. It’s just incredible to be up against these people. I read the two other articles I’m up against and they are brilliant, they both deserve to win.”

Teaching Australia has had more than 42,000 views on the Griffith Review website and is one of the most read stories the Griffith Review has ever published. 

“When I wrote it at one point I was agonising over something and I thought ‘Oh Gabs, stop agonising hardly anyone’s going to read this anyway.’ That’s truly what I thought.” 

But Gabbie’s essay really struck a cord with the Australian public. 

“I think a lot of people are feeling discontent with education and I think my essay started a conversation and empowered people to ask questions.”

“Because we are Australia and if it’s not working we can make changes. We seem to feel like we’re locked into this and we can’t look sideways. But we bloody can. We can look sideways and up and down and all around and make a system that works for us.”

When asked what Australia needs to do to fix the education problem, Gabbie recites her three points. 

“We need to stop making school’s like businesses because schools aren’t businesses and in fact schools aren’t like anything else. They are unique and very special places. 

“Secondly, teaching is both a science and an art. We have to stop reducing teaching down to this standardised process.

“Lastly, there is nothing standard about the journey of learning. If you put two students next to each other there’s nothing standard about them. Each person is an individual so trying to impose this standardised structure is never going to lead to happy, productive and successful people.” 

The Walkley winners will be announced in Brisbane on December 2.