Helen Koutroulis

(Vice President)

My name is Helen Koutroulis and I live in Melbourne Australia where I have held teaching and leadership positions for 38 years in a variety of P-12 schools. I have extensive teaching experience in several academic disciplines and have been a classroom teacher ranging from Prep to VCE levels. My Leadership roles have included Coordinating learning area departments, director of curriculum and Head of Primary for two P-12 Colleges and Chaplaincy for Educational settings.

Some of my initiatives include establishing an Early Learning Centre, designing a whole school wellbeing programme, creating a bilingual Classical Academy for a language schooland designing and implementing a synthesis of Philosophy and Religion and Society curriculum for years 7-12 in a Grammar School. My initial interest in Classical Education grew out of my constant pursuit in connecting students to their spirit by pursuing what is good , true, and beautiful.Throughout my teaching career, I was a strong believer that education was largely about human formation above all else and my constant endeavours in cultivating in my students, the virtues, led me to further studies in educational chaplaincy and Socratic inquiry. In the past 14 years I have been researching and designing curriculum embodying the principles of Classical Education and passing on the perennial truths of humanity by studying the great books. An integral part of my teaching practise consist of the Greek conceptionof education which is encapsulated in the term Paideia, the ideal model in education. This timeless and universal ideal ofpaideia embodied in each student, is the cornerstone of the revival of classical education.