About Narissa Leung

Hi there,

My name is Riss and I'm the Oz Lit Teacher.

I’ve always loved books and reading. 

When I was in primary school, I was selected to be in Miss Patterson’s prestigious book contacting club. I spent my lunchtimes holding, smelling and reading beautiful new Australian books. I loved discussing the new books and dreamt of being a CBCA Book Week judge way back then.

I’ve been a writer since my year 1 teacher, Mrs Brown, said I was. 

I’m a lifelong lover of writing thanks to Mrs Brown and her writing workshop. I have fond memories of drafting, conferring and publishing books in my early schooling days. I still enjoy writing today and have even had some of my writing published (no picture books yet, but it’s still on my agenda!).

My goal in life is to hook everyone (students AND teachers) on reading and writing. 

Literacy opens doors. There’s plenty of research to prove the importance of literacy for both individuals and communities. I want to hook everyone on reading and writing in the same way my teachers did for me.

My favourite author is Roald Dahl. 

Even though he's not Australian, I just love Roald Dahl's writing! I’ve always loved his creativity and humour and his willingness to break the rules. (Who said you can’t make up new words or frizzle someone like a fritter in a children’s book?) I find all of his books for kids simply scrumdiddlyumptious.

I’ve always been addicted to research. 

I’m not talking about the formal university kind (although I do have a Masters in Education), I’m talking about the “I’m super curious about this idea, so I’m going to investigate it” kind...

As an example, as a university student I became curious about ways to reengage boys who’d become disengaged with education. So, I learned how to breakdance, then went to a school and taught lunchtime classes to disengaged kids. I took the newly trained breakdance team to do demos at other schools and even ran an interschool breakdance competition. Throughout this project, I studied the impact the renewed self-confidence and sense of connection had on the boys’ classroom learning. The results were amazing and confirmed my belief in the importance of social and emotional well-being on learning. I’ve done all types of mini-research projects since and each one makes me just as excited about learning (and research) as this one.

I took a risk, ‘broke the rules’ and was awarded a $50,000 scholarship for my troubles. 

I was working for the Victorian Department of Education at the time and received the prestigious Lindsay Thompson Fellowship at their Education Excellence Awards. I didn’t break any laws or agreements; I just did a bit of creative outside-the-box thinking. I used the scholarship money to visit schools and education departments in Singapore, the USA, Canada, China and India. I also visited tech companies such as Google, Intel and Cisco in Silicon Valley. I met some amazing educators on my travels and did an invaluable amount of learning about schools, education, learning, leadership, systems, cultures and people.