“They might think I’m crazy, but as long as they don’t mind, then that’s OK with me,” says Dr Sam Moyle.

They’re unconventional words, from an unconventional science teacher – but then again, when you’ve just won one of SA’s top teaching awards, unconventional is the order of the day.

“It’s a bit ironic, because I vowed and declared that I would never be a teacher,” she continues. “My mum and dad are both teachers, and I swore it would never happen to me. Yet here I am.”

Flinders University graduate Dr Moyle is bubbly, energetic and utterly frank about how she ended up teaching at Brighton Secondary school.

It’s the kind of rare and unfaltering honesty which makes her a dream to interview.

Who? Check! What? Check! Where, when, why? Check, check, check – all without missing a beat.

That’s probably part of what makes her such a hit with her students, with whom she engages through dramatically innovative science experiments, and even a “Dr Sam Facebook page” which helps her shares her love of science with them, quite literally, 24-7.

It certainly hasn’t done her any harm with the wider South Australian teaching community either, given that she was recently named the Early Career STEM Educator of the Year for School Teaching.

“I think a combination of things led to me becoming a teacher,” she says. “When I was doing my PhD, I wasn’t sure I was as good as I would like to be in the field, and I didn’t think of myself as a very talented researcher.

“I did actually start my career as a lab assistant, but when the opportunity to educate kids about science that was cutting edge and real world came along, I found that it really excited me.

“I could see that the kids were still doing the same experiments I did at school, so I started developing more exciting, more relevant experiments to take things a step further.

“I really wanted to teach them things that were useful and which could be applied to everyday life. I think that really grabs the kids’ attention, and excites them about real world science.”

Listening to her talk, when it comes to “her kids”, inspiration in the classroom is clearly very much a two-way street for Dr Moyle.

“When you see the kids go ‘wow’ at science, it’s just awesome,” she says. “That inspires me, and I get really excited just seeing their excitement.

“What’s also fantastic is knowing that they take it home and show their families, sharing real world research science and how it applies to what they are doing.

“We talk about things like the Iron Man suit and about how real-life exo suits for paraplegics are being used to so that they can walk again.

“I do that because I think if you give science a real world application or view point then it’s much more relatable to kids.”

Thinking about what her students want is another element of her teaching strategy that she believes makes her popular with her classes.

“I was curious with one group of kids about what they thought of science teachers and the delivery of our lessons, and how they would learn if they were given the opportunity to decide for themselves, so I asked them what they thought a good teacher should be.

“They said enthusiastic, fun and relevant, but not too academic, because they found that to be overwhelming. So I’ve tried to be those things to help them connect with me better.”

Importantly though, she’s not just interested in what they want, but also in what they really need.

“One example of that, which I discovered by accident, was that the kids didn’t know how to do note taking,” Dr Moyle says.

“I was talking with one of them and she mentioned that everyone expects them to take notes, but no one had ever shown them how to do it.

“It turns out that almost every kid in the class was desperately trying to write down everything, and in doing so they were not just getting really frustrated, but also missing the main points.

“I taught them how to reduce their note-taking right down to the size of a post-it note, so they could pick the important things and not get lost trying to include what they didn’t need.”

Something else Dr Moyle impresses upon her students is that school is not just ‘practice’ for real life, but an important part of real life itself.

“I’m trying to get them to understand and be amazed, and I hope that they will also marvel at the wonders of the universe and want to explore them, but there is also as serious side to it all.

“I think some kids view school as a separate world to the real world, and that’s not helpful for them because it means that when they do finish school they’re totally unprepared.

“One aspect of the real world that I really work hard to get them to understand is the importance of deadlines.

“I’m really flexible in a lot of ways, but when I set deadlines, I make sure that they understand that any extensions have to be agreed in advance, and if not, that they will be failed.

“That’s quite a hard lesson for some of the kids, but I think it’s really important.”

In many ways, it’s not much to ask for back, considering the extra lengths that Dr Moyle goes to in order to give her students the best education she can.

Her Dr Sam Facebook Page, which she uses to “add an extra dimension to sharing things and engaging” is just one way in which she goes beyond the call of duty.

Then there are the tailored experiments, which are made to measure whenever possible.

“I will build just about anything that the kids can think of if I think it will encourage them to learn,” she says. “That applies to all of the kids, not just the more academic ones.”

And what do her students make of having a real-life PhD as their science teacher?

“The kids say to me that because I have a Doctorate that I must be really smart, but I tell them the truth, which is that I’m not – that I’m mostly just tenacious.

“It probably helps that I’m doing an Engineering degree at the moment as well, which I tell them all about in class and on my Facebook page.

“I think it helps when they see me worrying about failing the odd exam as well.”