You Can Change Careers And Still Belong

A marine biologist walks into a special school and ends up changing lives, including his own. We chat with Dan Willett, a former fisheries researcher who never planned on working in education, but found his best work inside a relationship-first school community at Lee Street State Special School in Caboolture. He shares the real story behind career change, redundancy, and the surprising skills that transfer when you move from research and industry liaison into supporting young people with disability.Dan takes us through the hard edges of teaching too: the relentless prep, behaviour challenges, and the moment he nearly walked away after his first year. What shifts everything is finding special education, where connection becomes the starting point and behaviour is understood through need and disability rather than defiance. We talk about the culture that helps students feel safe, why first-name relationships matter, and how “connect before you correct” becomes more than a slogan when you see it working every day.The biggest focus is post-school transition and family engagement. Dan explains how complex the NDIS landscape can be, why families often don’t know which disability support services to ask for, and how schools can act as a practical bridge to Local Area Coordinators and community programs. We also dig into what “good outcomes” actually mean after Year 12: purpose, participation, and a plan that gets students off the lounge and into a life that feels worthwhile.If you care about inclusive education, special schools, disability pathways, NDIS navigation, or strengthening school-family partnerships, this conversation will give you ideas you can use straight away. Subscribe, share it with a colleague or a parent, and leave a review so more people can find these stories and build better transitions.