Welcome Bianca Porcheddu, Merici College Academic Coordinator.
Bianca has over 20 years’ experience having worked across NSW and ACT in independent, Catholic schools, public education, International Baccalaureate schools and in Italy at the Polytechnic University of Turin. Born as an identical twin in Wollongong from a Sardinian-Italian family, Bianca has fond memories of attending St Mary Star of the Sea College, an all-girls Catholic school where those foundations provided many opportunities to excel as an elite and internationally respected professional musician whilst pursuing a career in education. Bianca completed a Masters of Historical Performance Practice under the Queens Trust of Australia Award and Nuffic Dutch Government Scholarship, a Diploma in Secondary Education and 1st Class Honours from the Australian National University. At Bianca’s previous school posting she was Leader of Information and Media Literacy and member of the School Board for four years. Her teaching areas include Integrated Humanities, English and she was Director of Music at an all-girls secondary school in Bathurst. As a fluent speaker of Italian, Bianca has also taught Italian from K-12 and led several international tours for secondary school students. For Bianca’s dedication, commitment and excellence in the pursuit of a career that honours the Australian and Italian communities, she was recognised with the Italo-Australian Woman of the Year Award.
Whilst maintaining a career in education, Bianca has been a member of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra since 1998, recently performed with the Leipzig Baroque Orchestra in Germany, holds an extensive discography collection, including sound tracks for films including Spectre (James Bond), and currently leads the Canberra Bach Ensemble. In 2022, Bianca was invited as a protagonist to film an international cinematic documentary titled “Living Bach” due to be released later in 2023. The narrative explores traces and influences of the Baroque composer JS Bach on the lives of our First Nations People in Central Australia where a school was formed by the Lutheran Missionaries over 140 years ago to support women and children. As Bach modelled the traits of a life-long learner, thinker and risk-taker in his intellectual, social and artistic explorations, Bianca believes passionately that learning gives creativity, creativity provokes thinking and thinking provides knowledge. As an educator, Bianca believes our role is to help build a society where young people can become respectful, empathetic, honest, happy and successful through their learning experiences; It is when people are happy that so much can be achieved.
We welcome Bianca to our school community.
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