Episode Overview
One hundred episodes. Six years. And one very familiar guest.
For Episode 100 of the Bridge Building Podcast, Stephen Anderson returns to where it all began.
Andrew Devoy was the podcast’s very first guest in August 2020. Six years later, he’s back to answer the same question Stephen asked him in that original conversation:
What’s happening at Marist College Ashgrove?
The answer involves quite a lot of motorsport.
Andrew shares how the College’s go-kart program has developed since its beginnings in 2014. What started as an extracurricular activity has grown into an annual multi-school event, with the 2025 challenge involving eight schools, around 22 karts and 125 students.
The conversation then moves into Formula High School and Marist’s Certificate II Engineering Pathways program.
Here, students work within a simulated workplace rather than a traditional classroom structure. They sign in, receive job cards and manufacture real components required for the Formula High School vehicle. Their work must meet required standards and pass quality control before they move onto their next job.
The finished vehicle is then taken to Lakeside Park for a six-hour endurance event, where students experience the culmination of months of practical work, teamwork and preparation.
Andrew and Stephen also discuss the importance of industry partnerships, sponsorship, teacher leadership and providing students with authentic experiences that give practical learning genuine meaning.
For a milestone episode, it’s a conversation that brings the Bridge Building Podcast back to its beginnings while demonstrating exactly why these stories are worth sharing.
About the Bridge Building Podcast
“This is the place where we dissect and then discover the many ways ITD teachers all over this country are using their passion to create passionate students. We talk of measuring and manipulating a multitude of materials of design and divergent thought, of creation with our minds and with our hands. And most of all, we talk of growing great young people because of course that is what we do.”
So what does that mean other than I like to show off my alliteration skills? Since coming back to teaching a few years ago the thing that strikes me most, and frankly scared me most is how lonely this job is. How little we know about what is happening in our subject area. The classroom next door, a class in the next school, let alone the next town are a mystery to me. I know there are teachers out there doing incredible things and this (the podcast) is a way for me to find out and be inspired. I would like to invite you along to listen and learn, to be inspired by some of the sensational teachers I speak to on the “Bridge Building Podcast – from technology to the trades”
About the Podcast Host
Stephen Anderson is a Design Technology, Trade Training and accidental Science teacher at a small high school 2 hours North West of Brisbane.
Over To You
If you know someone who is doing something spectacular or just great fun in design and tech or in trade training, I would love to know about them.
Contact me through my email osaerial@gmail.com
Music by:
Viola Pink