Infocus: with educator, seamstress and textiles designer Bernadette Francis
Image by Liz Looker
“Mother to me has also meant entertainer – so many of my memories of childhood are coloured by the laughter and wonder I experienced from the parties, performances and pretend play that my mum always somehow found the time to curate for me, to shield me from the realities that living below the poverty line and an estranged father could potentially warrant. ”
Bernadette is an educator specialising in Visual Arts, English, Food Technology, Drama, Textiles and Inclusive Education. With a background in fashion design and traditional garment construction studying at RMIT, she is insanely talented and fundamentally creative. We have shared a friendship for over ten years.
With bright eyes, smokin’ style, magenta lippy and the best sense of humour, you may remember being served by Bernadette in your youth at Alice Euphemia, an iconic fashion house stationed in the Nicholas Building. At the rare age of 24, she co-founded PER-TIM, a boutique bedding and loungewear brand (way before loungewear was a thing) and went on to study teaching, specialising in inclusive education and design. Now six years later, with a two-year-old, she is still on this career trajectory, a purposeful career that allows her to be creative and grounded. Goals.
Indonesian and Burmese by heritage, Bernie now lives and works on Boorloo land/Perth raising her son in a beautiful community comprising of her husband, her housemates James and Kiri and her mother Hindrarti.
It was so lovely to reconnect with this spirited, intelligent and authentic woman. This interview is completely exposing. Enjoy with a glass of chilled red after the kids are in bed.
Tell us about what it means to be a teacher. The joys, the lows and everything in between.
Being a teacher means a great deal of privilege and a great deal of duty. It's simultaneously the most serious and silliest job I’ve ever had. To be trusted with building skills, sharing stories, and developing new ways of thinking with young people each and every day is honestly a dream to be paid to do. The joys are manifold - whether it's a reserved student growing into their groove, the energy of a creative classroom all utterly engaged in a lesson I’ve worked hard on preparing, a parent calling you in tears to express their gratitude for checking in on their child after experiencing family hardship - it’s an unpredictable career that throws different things at you on the reg. The lows, as well documented in the media, are real – unsustainable workloads, poor pay, decision fatigue – but for me currently, I feel so lucky to be in a position where the positives outshine the negatives. Teaching has made me a better person, mother, friend, lover and daughter. I now appreciate the craft of firstly understanding the unique ways people learn, and how to tailor your approach to appeal to and enhance that. It is a skill that extends to every relationship in my life.
You teach at an all-female lead school. What is it like teaching teenage girls?
I feel a deep sense of responsibility to be able to role model for these girls that it’s ok to talk freely about getting your period at inopportune times, or that the gender pay gap exists because of the structural inequities in the workplace faced by mothers returning to work, or that ‘perfection’ is not actually a real thing to attain. And that gender is constructed, being Asian doesn’t mean you have to play by the rules and that relationship red flags are real and trust your gut girl! I try to be the teacher that teenage Bernadette wishes she had – one that is unashamedly themself, actually listens, is generous with their time but maintains healthy boundaries, is a calming and consistent presence, celebrates the big and small things, and laughs (or sometimes cries) with you.
A sentence to describe your pregnant body.
The most beautiful and most myself that I have ever felt in my life.
Three words to describe your birth.
Torn! Transported. Euphoric.
Image by Liz Looker
Monty was only four months old when you had to return to work. Can you explain to us what that was like emotionally and physically?
Returning to work when my son was still so vulnerable (as was I!) was a great paradox for me. On one hand, I was eager to see how my increased patience, compassion and multi-tasking prowess built in the fourth months of mothering would transfer into the art of my teaching practice. As the first mother to return to my workplace whilst breastfeeding, I was also feeling a sense of quiet responsibility and power in blazing a trail in an all-girls educational institution. On the other hand, though, I was terrified to close the door on the peace of the monotonous pace of the days with just Monty as the only child I had to look after. The first six months of being back at work was taxing; zig zagging around physically, mentally and emotionally to teach, pump, meet, pump, eat, teach, teach, drive home, decant breastmilk, look after Monty while my husband works at night, sleep, wake, prepare bottles, do it all again. I look back at that time and marvel at how I maintained the energy to get through 5 days a week of it and remain somewhat sane!?.
We talk a lot about the term Village in the birth space. Little Monty was and is raised by a village, can you tell us how this works and the roles you all play.
We moved in with our best friend James in the height of the pandemic when I was 5 months pregnant. James and I had both recently lost our fathers’ and we were already all spending so much time together mourning, so moving in to ride that eternal rollercoaster of grief just felt like the right thing to do. Many people in our lives questioned how the unorthodox sit-com nature of 30+ year olds raising a child together in a sharehouse would actually work, but for the child Monty has become, it’s obviously been the most beautiful setting for him to flourish in. When my husband works in the evenings, I have two other part-time co-parents (our other best friend Kiri moved in when Monty was 6 months old) to share the load – whether they take him on a walk when I want to cook an elaborate family meal / have a shower / need time out, or they themselves are yearning to surrender from the corporate grind to the unbridled joy of playing with a baby. It’s become a symbiotic relationship and Monty wakes up every morning declaring his love and desire to hang out with them, as much as for me or his dad. My mum Hindrarti has been the rock upon which our whole lives are anchored. Monty spends two nights a week with her (his ‘gaga’) which allows me and my husband the space to catch up on grocery shopping / life admin / lesson planning / marking / catching up with friends that we would find otherwise impossible to fit in with the demands that full-time work, running a small business and parenting bring.
The word mother means to you.
Motherhood as modelled by my mum has always meant sacrifice; she was an immigrant single parent who worked three jobs while we lived in state housing to try and make a better life for us both. For that I am forever grateful and her recent evolution into doting grandmother has been an absolute joy to witness. Mother to me has also meant entertainer – so many of my memories of childhood are coloured by the laughter and wonder I experienced from the parties, performances and pretend play that my mum always somehow found the time to curate for me, to shield me from the realities that living below the poverty line and an estranged father could potentially warrant. I grew to realise that these versions of motherhood sit at the precarious intersections of race, class and gender, and that to be a mother does not necessarily have to mean to give everything of yourself to your children.
How has your relationship with your mother evolved since becoming one?
My mum was your quintessential ‘tiger mum’. I played the classical piano in primary school, in year 5 was tutoring my mum after school to help her re-sit her year 12 maths unit, and heaven forbid if I ever came home with a grade less than an A, the punishment would make life not worth living. This was conflated with the fact I was an only child, and that my mum was a single parent ESL immigrant whose reason for being was to make my life a better one than hers. I ended up achieving a high ATAR and going to a prestigious university purely to lend my mum some bragging rights with her friends, but not actually for my own sake or satisfaction. I moved out of home at 18 and high-tailed over to the other side of the country partly to free myself from the expectations and to discover who I am outside of her. After witnessing my graduate collection runway at Melbourne Fashion Festival, I distinctly remember her saying that she was proud of me, after seven long years of not hearing those words. They were followed up by her realisation that happiness is the freedom to do what you want, which she has only learned since seeing me do what I want. A poignant reflection on her life but a necessary affirmation of mine!
Since becoming a mother myself, I now understand the brutality of the sacrifices mothers make in their careers, their bodies, their social lives and themselves daily. Compounded with the marginalising factors of being an immigrant, a single mother, of low socioeconomic status, it's hardly surprising that tiger parenting became my mum. I have a deeper respect for all that she managed to do and provide to enable us to flourish in a system that often fails people like us.
Image by Liz Looker
Some traditional rituals you did with Monty to honour your Indonesian heritage.
Growing up in deep suburbia where being Asian meant being other, I spent my childhood and teenage years trying to assimilate. After moving to Melbourne and experiencing the death of my father, I began to shed myself of my cultural cringe and embarked on reacquainting myself with the beauty of my Indonesian and Burmese roots. The food, the gestures, the connections, the slang words - I felt ashamed that I spent so much of my life denying this intrinsic part of myself.
When I became pregnant with Monty, I knew that it was the perfect time to reorient my ties to culture. Traditional postpartum healing beliefs in South Asia are centered on the notion that a woman's body is drained of all its energy after birth. The mother must have complete rest, receive good nutrition to help restore vitality and her abdomen bound. My mum moved in for a week before Monty’s birth and stayed for 3 weeks after, to allow me to truly rest. She made me congee after congee to eat to provide me with warming nourishment (cold foods are thought to inhibit the production of breastmilk and delay healing) and I wore a girdle in the first two months postpartum.
I also loosely abided by the South Asian tradition of shaving your baby's hair after the first 100 days. I was too nervous to cut his hair by that time frame (the little fontanelles!), so we extended this out to 200 days. Monty’s 7 month anniversary was marked by a buzzcut, which he pulled off with aplomb, and complimented his dad’s bald head nicely!
Another traditional ritual which we still follow to this day is co-sleeping. Some of my white friends think we’re crazy for still doing it but I honestly can’t think of a more beautiful way of reconnecting with your child when working full-time. It allows us to be close, prevents me from getting out of the bed in the middle of the night to comfort him and makes for some adorable snuggles. While it can be the bane of my existence when a wayward limb flings into my face at 3am, it’s become one of the parts I enjoy most about mothering.
What kind of education system do you hope to move into?
I embarked on my teaching career working in schools which served low socioeconomic communities, as I wanted to make a difference in a system which had helped me overcome the pitfalls of disadvantage. I then landed my dream job of a Textiles teacher, which saw me move into the single-sex private sector, a decision which internally, I still wrangle with.
My educational ideals center on an interdisciplinary approach - I am able to teach Visual Arts, English, Food Technology, Drama, Textiles, Inclusive Education, and from this I think learning is enriched when it is thematic or free from the constraints of curriculum categories. The Green School in Bali is somewhere I would love to be a part of. Its focus on experiential and inquiry-based learning, taught holistically in a wall-less bamboo sustainably built campus in the middle of the Balinese jungle, would be a bloody DREAM!
Advice on mother’s who are transitioning into schooling years?
Choose a school to fit the child, rather than making the child fit the school. Research the educational philosophy, attend the open days, meet and talk to the educators - immersion is the only way to get a true sense of your childs’ future experience. As teachers, we act ‘in loco parentis’ (Latin for in place of the parent) and schools should therefore mirror your family values. After working in both the public and private sectors, I can honestly say that there is no one perfect school for every child, only the best school for your child. But you will need to do your homework to find it!
An ideal afternoon looks like…
A fully stocked pantry, an uninterrupted hour to cook a favourite meal, a bottle of chilled red sparking in the setting sunshine, an after-dinner dance party with Monty and my husband in the lounge room before bath time and settling into the couch to all watch Jeopardy and head to bed together by 8pm. Oof!
Follow Bernie’s journey here: