A lot of teachers can credit an inspirational teacher from their own school days for their career path, but for Linden's Chris Presland the opposite is true.
"I was sitting in an English class with a teacher that I thought was doing an interminably boring job," he said of his senior schooling at Sylvania High School.
"I remember thinking: 'This job is so important and you're doing a lousy job of it, I want to do a better job.' From that moment I decided I wanted to be a teacher."
That decision saw the 55-year-old awarded the Public Service Medal in Monday's Australia Day honours for his "outstanding public service to education" in a 34-year career.
"In my view public education is the cornerstone of Australian democracy. It's one of the reasons Australia has had, on a world-wide level, one of the most stable democracies on the planet - a big part of that is our public education system," he said.
While he started his career teaching English and history at Belmore Boys High School in Sydney, it wasn't long before Mr Presland rose to the executive ranks. He was later appointed deputy principal at Pendle Hill High School before becoming principal of Airds High School near Campbelltown at the relatively young age of 40.
Mr Presland's passion for his job has seen him become an active committee member of the Principals Australia Institute and a national director of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders for the past six years.
He received the John Laing Professional Development Award from the Principals Australia Institute in 2010 as well as the Patrick Duignan Award for Leadership.
The principal of St Clair High School for the past seven years, one of Mr Presland's biggest challenges was getting students back to school following a devastating fire that destroyed almost all the school on June 29 last year.
But just two weeks after the school holiday fire, the students returned to 20 demountable classrooms.
"A major source of anxiety straight away was that the kids would need to be housed at another school," Mr Presland told Fairfax Media at the time.
"But I said straight away that the kids would be back on site, at our school, on day one."
While that crisis captured national headlines, Mr Presland said it is the everyday rewards that don't make the news that sustain most teachers in the profession.
"To put it in perspective, we have roughly 1000 human beings at our school - teachers and students. So that's a thousand lives, a thousand families, and at any one time there's a lot of stuff happening. As a principal you're at the centre of that and that's really humbling.
"The biggest reward is knowing at any point in time you're making a difference in those lives."
Mr Presland said he was shocked to receive the Australia Day honour but was happy to accept it on behalf of all public education workers.
"While it's recognition for me, by the same token it's recognition that is built on the work of a hell of a lot of people giving their heart and soul to the job," he said.
