Bella stays in touch with her teaching destiny

Bella Slattery grew up in Coogee and expects she’ll live most of her life in Sydney’s sun-kissed southeastern beaches, but while her community is clear, her course selection took more time.

“I actually didn’t come here straight after school, because I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and it took me three years to figure it out,” Bella said.

“I’m surrounded by teachers and sport, and I was sort of avoiding it for so long because my mum is a teacher. And she would say I told you so! But here I am now, studying to be a PDHPE teacher, so I gave in!”

Bella grew up playing every kind of sport she could lay a hand, glove or shoe on from rugby league to dance practice. “As you get older, you have to choose, and I ended up playing just all tag and touch football. Recently I’ve just focused on touch football,” she said.

“I was always in and out of school playing sport, so I was always catching up on lessons that that put me a bit behind during my trials. I did pretty well in my HSC exams, but my subjects didn’t scale well and my ATAR wasn’t what I wanted it to be,” Bella said.

“Because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just left it for a bit and was like, oh, I’ll wait til I’m 21 and then I can choose whichever course I want to do and then I ended up coming here.

“They accepted me straight away because I won a female athlete scholarship. They love promoting people in sport, especially female athletes. So I just loved what they were promoting and that’s what pushed me to come here.

“The classes are so much smaller than other unis. So it was really easy to find friends and sort of mingle with my classmates right away. Like, I think we had 15 people in our class to start with, and I’m friends with all of them.”

In addition to enrolling in the Bachelor of Education (Physical and Health Education) at ACPE, Bella continues to work part-time and train for touch football – achieving the highest possible honour while also studying at ACPE.

In 2024 she represented Australia in the Open Women’s Touch Football side in 2024, heading to Nottingham in the UK for the tournament.

“We won, so Australia is the best of the best in touch football. There were lots and lots of countries there and it was just such a fun time.”

“I had a couple of other options to study before I chose teaching, like business, for example, but I just felt I wouldn’t fit in there.

“I sort of knew that if I became a teacher, it would be good for me because, I’ve just been surrounded by sport. It’s a great subject to be able to teach children growing up, learning about physical health.

“I would recommend it, especially to my friends that I know love sport or want a pathway into something to do with sport.”

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