Meet member, musician and educator Andrew Chinn, who celebrates 40 years of IEU membership this year.
Few people are lucky enough to have a life-changing mentor, but Andrew Chinn got the winning ticket when he met Bobby Cameron. “He’s loomed large over my career and my life,” said Chinn, the teacher-turned musician and educator.
Chinn met Cameron when he was a 17-year-old primary student teacher. When Chinn began working full-time as a primary school teacher, Cameron told him to do two things: join the union and sign up for non-compulsory superannuation. Chinn listened, and is glad he did, with this year marking four decades of IEU membership.
As he looks back on his career, Cameron is still the best teacher Chinn has come across, “the most gifted naturally, the most inspirational, the funniest”.
While Chinn was, by his own admission, a little bit conservative and constrained when he started out, Cameron lived life to the fullest and had a personality that was a little “out there”, a little wild. “He opened up ideas and ways of teaching to me that, had I not met him, I wouldn’t have found possible,” said Chinn. Cameron taught him that the two best ways to bond with a class are storytelling and song.
Drummer to classroom performer
Music already meant a lot to Chinn. In the mid 80s to the early 90s, “I was in a rock band that played the pubs of Sydney and back then I was the drummer,” he remembers. Chinn and his band the Foxhunters appeared on MTV and the ABC’s late-night music program, Rage.
While not many pub rockers transition to playing music for kindergarten kids (with the notable exception of The Wiggles), Chinn found he had many transferable skills. “Every teacher is a performer,” he said.
It’s hard to know whether five-year-olds or pub patrons make for a rowdier crowd, but Chinn loved his new audience. “When you teach kindergarten, music sort of becomes essential, because you need all these tools to keep going during the day to keep things lively and vibrant. And the guitar was my constant companion.”
New life after enormous loss
After working various teaching and leadership roles, everything suddenly changed when Chinn lost his beloved daughter Belinda to cancer. “Belinda was a great singer and she and I played at church for many years.” Chinn took stock of his life and realised it was time to try something new.
At the end of 2002, Chinn and his wife started a new business, Butterfly Music, to create, record and perform religious music. Now, more than 20 years later, Chinn runs workshops for students and performs his music in Catholic schools in Australia, as well as New Zealand, the US and Canada.
The track Chinn calls his “signature song”, His Hands, took off on TikTok when his former students performed it on the app, he said. “My youngest daughter was the one who spotted it and said: ‘Dad you’re going viral on TikTok’. It was a lovely affirming thing that I was part of some good memories of kids growing up.”
Working together as one
While his career has changed, his IEU membership has remained the one constant, said Chinn, who remembers going on strike in the mid 90s when he was an assistant principal.
A staff member was worried that striking would affect the kids and he told them: “That’s why we go on strike, because we care about the kids. We care about them having teachers who are well rewarded, who have good working conditions, who can then deliver better education for them.”
Chinn still believes strongly in unionism. He’s seen class sizes reduced thanks to IEU action, which is a “pretty major achievement”, he said.
Chinn is grateful that his mentor convinced him to join 40 years ago. Cameron told him being part of the union was about protection, back up, support, and better working conditions. But it was when his colleague pointed to the elements of unionism that align with Catholic values, that Chinn really took notice.
“There’s that whole sense of working together as one, you know, one unified group for the good of all. That was what got me.”