Teaching is a family affair for John Clarke whose children have followed in his illustrious footsteps.
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Mr Clarke turns 77 this year and has been teaching for 56 years with the past 34 years spent at James Sheahan Catholic High School where three of his seven children now also teach.
He also taught at Blayney High School and Canobolas Rural Technology High School for 11 years each.
He initially taught history, geography and economics before being inspired by two of his daughters to learn and teach Japanese in 1996.
"I get a great deal of satisfaction seeing kids learn, particularly kids who think they can't learn," he said.
Mr Clarke's children attended James Sheahan and three of them, Helen Clarke, Michelle Whiteley and Gabrielle Logan all decided to follow in his footsteps. Now all four of them teach Japanese at the school.
As a result, family get-togethers can turn into faculty meetings and Mr Clarke said they have to remember to be considerate of the rest of the family and not talk about work the whole time.
First daughter to become teacher
The first of his children to follow him into the teaching profession was Ms Clarke who is now the school's languages coordinator. She has been teaching Japanese since 1993 and worked on and off at the school teaching Japanese and French since 2003.
She said she learnt French at James Sheahan all the way through to year 12 and wanted to become a French language teacher but there was more demand for Japanese teachers that time so she got a scholarship to become a Japanese teacher.
She also received a scholarship to study in Japan for three months and grew close with her host family, whose granddaughter she hosted at the start of this year.
"I loved the language from an academic point of view but once I stayed with that family suddenly it was that human connection," Ms Clarke said.
"I could not wait to come and stand in a classroom and tell kids about this incredible country with these incredibly generous and hospitable people who looked after me like I was their own child for three whole months."
She said her father was also an integral part of her early teaching career.
"Apart from seeing what he does and feeling very happy and excited to be a teacher myself, in those early years you need some help," Ms Clarke said.
"He's so good as a mentor and a role model. I might not have stayed in the job if I hadn't had his support in those early years."
Second daughter becomes teacher
Another daughter, Michelle Whiteley also teaches French and Japanese and earlier in their careers the two sisters covered each other's maternity leave.
Mrs Whiteley taught one Japanese class this year while she was relieving principal for the first half of the year. From June 30 she is the school's assistant principal: wellbeing.
Mrs Whiteley started teaching in 1995 and has been teaching at James Sheahan since 2000 and like her sister enjoyed teaching Japanese.
"I suppose Dad saw our enthusiasm and the connections and the experiences we had and that influenced his diversification," she said.
Third daughter becomes teacher
All three family members taught younger sister Gabrielle Logan before she graduated from James Sheahan.
She is now a permanent teacher in Technical Applied Science and Japanese having started at the school in a temporary role last year.
"I loved learning from all three," Mrs Logan said.
"Dad taught me first and as I progressed through the years I had both [sisters] during my senior years and it was fantastic because they are so knowledgeable, they're so enthusiastic and as you can tell they are so passionate about what they teach so that sort of gets a bit like osmosis, it's catchy."
"There's actually five Japanese teachers here now but everybody knows Sensei is Dad."
Before becoming a teacher Mrs Logan spent 10 years as an interior architect.
"Two years into being an interior architect I decided I wanted to be a teacher but due to the children that kept coming along it's taken me a long time to get my degree so I started teaching here last year," she said.
"I teach graphics, timber and now Japanese."
She said her teaching degree was influenced by her interior architecture background.
"I wanted to be a teacher because of these three and my husband and I wanted to teach here because they were here as well," Mrs Logan said.
Her husband Austen Logan is a primary school teacher at Bletchington Public School but he did his prac at James Sheahan.
Inspirational Sensei
Mr Clarke now works part time and now aged in his 77th year said he's taking his career year by year.
"He's not teaching because he needs to teach, he's teaching because he wants to teach and obviously the students love him because the students can make or break you from what I can see so far," Mrs Logan said.
"He's not going to be doing this for the length of time that he has done without students loving what he does."
Mrs Whiteley said the family members work at different parts of the school so it's not often that they are together but when they are it turns heads.
"It's just fabulous to have shared part of Dad's career, we feel privileged to be a colleague of someone who has taught for as long as he has and had the experience and respect from both the school community but the wider community," she said.
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