Welcome to McMahon Education (M.E.)! My name is Colleen, and I have over fifteen years of teaching experience at both primary and tertiary education levels. Currently, I enjoy my job as a teacher at several Sydney schools, and work extensively with children from grades Kindergarten to 6 in all subject areas. At university I have coached individual budding undergraduate teachers with disabilities, and tutored science units over several semesters while undertaking my own study.

To find out more about my professional background, click on the button right here.

McMahon Education presently offers both one-to-one and small group tuition sessions. As a company in the phase of professional establishment, the aim is to ultimately offer more than the standard one hour of face-to-face time per week.

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​Programs cater to a variety of individual needs, yet align to the grade expectations prescribed by the Australian Curriculum. Each student has flexibility between adhering to a planned ten-week structure, or allowing adjustments as needs throughout the term are identified. M.E. also provides a personalised, password protected student web page (parent approval pending). Here students will find homework activities, useful resources, and a means to personally communicate with Colleen should any questions or concerns arise before their next session. 

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​Future programs will include specialised workshops and holiday programs, when interest is expressed. Click the button below to find out what session times are currently on offer.

The Australian curriculum has come a long way from the traditional teacher-led ‘chalk and talk’ instruction, to the current climate of student driven open inquiry-based learning.  

Both styles have their benefits; however just as chalk and talk does not cater for all learning needs or abilities, the same can be said for open inquiry learning. With one child’s learning branching off in a different direction to those of their immediate peers, there is inevitably greater individual need for content revision, skill consolidation, and general support or extension. If you believe that your child would benefit from extra academic practice, feel free to contact me via the form above.

Richard Feynman was an eminent theoretical physicist whose research was guided by having ‘the pleasure of finding things out’. This is the fundamental philosophy that McMahon Education strives to follow.

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Feynman was ahead of the times when he recognised that the acquisition of knowledge for knowledge's sake does not equate to learning; finding out all that can be discovered about something of personal interest - in the most enjoyable way possible - does.

My educational values have been directly inspired by Feynman. The following quote is one of many gems that uniquely sum up his educational sentiments: 

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.