Heather De Blasio has spent a lifetime committed to growing others and refusing to put limits on what people can achieve. Her teaching career began as a tennis coach in rural South Australia, and she went on to become a bilingual ski instructor in both Australia and Austria. A natural-born teacher, Heather has since held middle and executive leadership responsibilities in pastoral care, curriculum, and teaching and learning at a range of independent schools.
Heather has participated at the executive levels of leadership in many associations, including as president of the Association of Secondary Research Teachers, and as an executive committee member of history and English teachers’ associations in South Australia.
Heather also played an important role in developing and training teachers to implement the Research Project, a new compulsory subject for Year 12 students across South Australia. As a part-time lecturer and tutor at Flinders University’s Graduate School of Education, and through guest presentations at the University of Melbourne, she has also helped shape the careers of many aspiring teachers.
An engaging presenter, Heather has taken to the stage at state, national and international conferences, including the Australian Council of Educational Leadership, Australian College of Educators, International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement, uLead and the International Conference on Thinking.
Topics have included everything from tackling in-school variation to intentionally developing the leadership skills of middle leaders. She is a contributing author to the second edition of Patrick Griffin’s Assessment for Teaching (2017) and is completing a Doctor of Education at the University of Melbourne on the subject of building middle leaders’ leadership capacity.