Class of 2019: Zali Spinner

According to Class of 2019 alumni Zali Spinner, Shearwater has “a certain kind of magic” that is hard to describe. “I was so sad to graduate and leave,” says Zali, who attended from Kindergarten to Year 12, with a brief foray to Mullum High in early high school. “I continued to come to all the School events after I graduated and I rave about Shearwater to everyone I meet”. No surprises then to see Zali return recently to the School as a staff member, working part-time at the reception front desk.

“It’s so cool to see what goes on behind the scenes to make that magic happen,” she says, citing her favourite memories of School as WAVE, the camps and the relationships with staff and students. “Our Guardians Anna and Oren were amazing and really built a feeling of family. Our class is still very close. We have a class chat and have had a reunion every year since we graduated. When a friend of ours from Primary School died, we had the funeral here at Shearwater. It’s a special place to so many people”.

Since graduating, Zali has built a diverse career in local government, taking on various roles at Byron Shire Council where she is currently employed as an executive assistant to her former English teacher and recently elected Greens Mayor Sarah Ndiaye.

“I got an early offer to study International Relations and Social Sciences at uni. But then I was offered a traineeship at Byron Council right after leaving school – a great opportunity to learn more about local politics.”

Over the next five years, Zali had a number of roles at council, including as a Community Enforcement Officer. “A total rebellion! I was my dad’s greatest disappointment!” laughs Zali. However it was in the first awful days of the 2022 flood event that devastated many of Mullum’s surrounding valleys, that Zali’s strong qualities of leadership and connection to community were forged. 

“I was really involved in the Main Arm community flood response. I slept on the floor of the Hall for months and was working huge days, coordinating support for the Main Arm community, which was completely cut-off. When the ADF finally arrived, they would come to the Hall each morning and I would give them their tasks because we had all the local knowledge – who was living alone, who needed food and medications. It was wild.”  

In the immediate aftermath of the floods, Zali left her compliance job at council to focus her efforts on the community’s recovery, and helped establish Main Arm Disaster Recovery, working in the emergency preparation and response space. Her work over this period led to another council role as a Community Flood Recovery Officer, before the EA job to the Mayor came up.

Her work has not escaped the attention of local politicians with offers to run in the recent council elections. However Zali has turned her attention from politics to another of her passions, Steiner education, for which she credits her Shearwater education and her grandmother, Dawn Griggs, a freelance teacher, writer, and learning consultant, who taught adult migrants, prisoners and young students in various institutions within Australia, France and China. Founding president of the NSW Accelerative Learning Association and author of Spirit of Learning, an exploration of the inextricable link between learning, individual personal development and potential, Zali describes Dawn as “inspirational”. 

With plans to study a Bachelor of Education in the future, Zali might just fulfill her new dream of  one day becoming a Shearwater teacher.