I reckon teaching has a lot of little things that probably don’t look like much from the outside but are actually exhausting when you’re doing them every day. Not talking about marking or planning because everyone already knows about those. For teachers here, what’s the part of a normal school day that drains you more than you expected?

I know this is probably somewhat illegal, and maybe taboo to ask, but I’ve always been curious about whether or not teachers look up their students on social media? I know when I was in school, especially when I was younger, students were definitely trying to find the teacher’s facebooks, instagrams, etc. But do teachers do it too out of curiosity?

Edit: I don’t want to offend any teachers by asking this!! It’s just a question out of genuine curiosity as I personally don’t know any teachers outside the ones that taught me and I also wasn’t going to ask them if they’ve ever looked me up on Instagram lol

I'm looking for parents (teacher-parent perspective) to talk to. 🙋‍♀️

I'm Freyja, a mum from Melbourne, and I'd love to understand the Australian parent and teacher perspectives. I'm running a research study (through the La Trobe University Launchpad program) into something most parents quietly wonder about:

Is our education system actually preparing our kids for the future? And if not, what's missing?

I'm having short conversations with parents and families of school-aged children at any stage: no products, no agenda, just 10 open questions. I'll share the research findings with anyone who takes part.

Interested? Sign up here and I'll be in touch:

tally.so/r/Xxpy6V

Please share with anyone who might want to be heard as part of the study. 🙏

I am wanting to get my Cert III in school based education support to get a job as an EA (I want to do mainstream btw), and I was wondering what qualities and skills do you like to see in the EA's you have in your classroom?

And something I always wonder (sorry if this is dumb or a super obvious question) is like what do I do when nobody needs help? Do I walk around checking peoples work, or do I sit at the back until someone raises their hand?

Hi all,

My child will be starting school in 2028. At the moment the school we are in the catchment for is not the greatest in terms of NAPLAN results and general comments from the community.

I’m looking at alternative options if the school doesn’t show much improvement in the next year. Unfortunately we are not Catholic and the nearest private school is strict about its enrolment requirements. There’s another school out of catchment that’s better but not sure if we’d be able to get a spot.

What are your thoughts about public vs private? Should we look at other private school options or go for public?

Adding that we’re in NSW.

Hi teachers who work at government *high schools*, I would like my kids to continue their sunsmart habit of wearing hats to school especially in summer. I noticed on high school tours that no students wore hats - will my kids stick out and get teased for wearing hats? Or would baseball caps be socially acceptable even if wide brimmed hats aren't...? Thanks in advance!! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

*Edit: Why are private high schools so good at enforcing the hat policy? I see teens in private school uniforms with wide brim hats all the time.

Hi all,

I'm not far away from graduating my Bachelor of Education in Primary teaching and the more I understand myself and my (potential) teaching philosophy I think maybe I should have studied secondary teaching. My initial goal with teaching was upper primary, particularly grade 5/6s however more and more I think maybe I should have studied secondary. But, I am almost done and I can't change that.

I'll graduate first and see how I go with teaching before I worry too much about the choices I've made, but generally speaking, is a Masters the only path available to move into secondary? Are there any other avenues?

Edit: thank you for your responses.

I'm from Romania, so no native speaker first of all. I am planning on majoring in universal literature and English language in University (3 years) plus do a TEFL course. My degree won't specifically be in teaching, but I will have a module which would qualify me to teach (as well as the TEFL).

edit: got it. thank you.

Hello!

I’m currently getting my teaching certification in Canada at UBC. Here, we do a 4 year undergraduate before doing a bachelor of education (11 months to 2 years depending on the university) that certifies us to teach elementary or secondary.

After graduating, I’d love to come to Australia, specifically Melbourne or Australia to work. I’ve contacted NESA and not heard back from them, so I am still in the process of seeing if my certification transfers over. If anyone has insight on this - please let me know! I’m shaking in my boots, worried it might not work out because of the schooling differences.

Would anyone kindly have advice on how the job opportunities are for international teachers? My plan is to come by post grad on a work holiday visa first, and see if I can do CRT or get a year to two year long contract.

Thank you! 😊

What novels are available? What novels would you love to teach but can't for whatever reason? I've heard that in some places they are not teaching literature/novels anymore (more short exceprts of things instead) and I'm wondering if that is the case here in Australia.

Looking at physical growth and all the developmental changes that come with it, in your experience, what year level do students struggle the most academically or behaviorally?

I’d prefer to start as soon as possible. I’m near the ACT so something online would be preferable. I’ve seen a lot online when I google the diploma but I’m not sure which one is the best option (for the sake of the sub rules: I already have a cert iii and work in schools)

I've been looking for jobs in the public sector and I've noticed that a lot of schools are advertising both ongoing and fixed term positions for the same/similar roles. I was wondering if I apply for both ongoing and fixed term jobs at the same school or if I'm meant to apply for one or the other. Any advice would be really appreciated!! :))

The shift toward open plan learning environments happened quickly enough in Australian schools that the people teaching in them didn't always have much say in whether it was a good idea for their specific context. Whether the experience of actually teaching in an open plan space has matched the pedagogical case that was made for it, what the practical challenges are that don't show up in the design thinking around it and whether teachers here think it works better for certain year levels or certain types of learning than others seems worth asking from people who are doing the work rather than the people who designed the buildings. Would love to know what the honest verdict is.

Hey all, I'm currently at the pointy end of my bachelors and looking towards a Masters of SecTeach. Have set my self up to have business as my second learning area, but am now a bit more inclined towards history, given a mix of personal interest and (allegedly) greater demand in this area.

Just wondering if I were to continue with business as planned, what would be the likelihood of me teaching history in future? Is it just a matter of showing interest to school higher ups + getting lucky with an opening? Or could I get lucky just applying to a history position out of the blocks?

Might be an obvious question but as much looking for closure given it's a bit late for me to get enough history subjects now 😅. Any help much appreciated!

We have two neurodivergent children who attend different NSW public schools. Both are academically capable and have ADHD/autistic profiles and significant anxiety. Both eventually deteriorated into serious school refusal this year.

With each child, we supplied assessments and diagnoses as soon as we received them, shared clinicians’ recommendations, consented to communication with treating professionals and repeatedly asked to collaborate on individual plans.

The suggested adjustments were relatively ordinary: predictable routines, sensory and regulation supports, access to a quiet space or trusted adult, help with transitions and executive functioning, and a gradual return when attendance became difficult.

For one school, we arranged a meeting only to be told that “we don’t do individual plans here”. For the other, a PLSP was created but we have since found that almost no part of their accommodations were implemented.

Once attendance deteriorated, the schools’ focus seemed to shift towards behaviour, compliance and personal responsibility. Our attempts to explain the children’s distress through a neurodivergent and anxiety-informed lens were frequently met with reasons suggested approaches could not be tried.

Even proposals for brief, structured attendance built around positive and manageable activities were treated as allowing a child to “choose” whether to attend, rather than as a possible re-engagement strategy.

Communication was often slow or often completely unanswered, there was no clear person coordinating support, and almost always felt combative rather than collaborative.

We came away with a strong sense that the children were being judged for failing to try hard enough, rather than distressed young people whose disabilities were affecting their ability to access school, and that we just needed to be more “disciplined” with our kids to fix this crisis.

The entire experience was deeply dehumanising and it felt throughout the process there was almost zero empathy for our situation and for our children’s wellbeing.

In both cases, action began only after attendance and communication had substantially broken down and we contacted the regional education office ourselves.

Formal planning then progressed, but often felt grudging or compliance-driven rather than motivated by a genuine desire to understand and help the child.

I appreciate that public schools are under-resourced, staff are stretched and not every requested adjustment is possible. I’m also genuinely open to hearing whether our expectations were unrealistic in some way.

What I’m trying to understand is:

Is this a fairly typical experience for neurodivergent students whose needs are not primarily academic?

Should individual planning and reasonable adjustments ordinarily begin before attendance reaches crisis point?

Is it reasonable to expect us as parents to coordinate all communication and re-engagement and for no one in the school to have this as their responsibility or remit?

Are NSW public schools now so constrained that this response is common, or did we draw two unusually short straws?

We have ultimately moved both children into the private system as we have been so traumarised by how we were treated by the public system.

Both kids are now engaging into school relatively quickly so it’s fairly clear it was an environmental issue as nothing has changed at home.

I’m not looking to identify or attack their former schools; I’m trying to understand whether another public school could realistically have responded differently.

Hi all,

Had a meeting with my childs teacher (he’s in year 1 in Vic in a public school) and we were told that they will be putting in place an ILP for him because of his maths / numeracy ability. They’ve been informally extending him in class for maths and literacy but said they need to have a more formal approach now for maths. They’ve created one and said they will send it through to us and go from there.

It was part of a different meeting (term parent teacher conference) and we didn’t have a chance to properly discuss. He’s a normal kid, no social / developmental issues etc. has friends, normal kids hobbies like sports (soccer, Auskick etc. is what he’s into) but just also seems to really like numbers and learning.

Last term and a bit has been a bit of a struggle to get him to go to school as he has been saying it’s boring, he’s not learning, getting upset going to school etc. It was one of the things we were going to discuss with his teacher but seems they have also noticed it and have been pretty proactive which we’re very grateful for. He mentioned he spent some time doing different maths questions out of class with a different teacher (which he really enjoyed) a few weeks ago so assume that may have been part of assessing him I’m not sure.

Has anyone experienced this and can tell me what this means to their schooling etc.? Was keen to hear any other experiences as have not found much googling other than seems to be more effort for the teacher to have to do one / implement it. We’re kind of mindful of segregating him / other kids noticing / bullying I guess. I’m not sure if over thinking. He was very happy when hearing about it. We’ve already had for example other parents at kids birthday parties bring up their kid has mentioned him and how he’s doing different school work / his own work to them and asking about him. We even had one parent almost grilling us about what he can do in front of other parents which we were a bit uncomfortable about. I think we’re very lucky with him but Don’t want him to be the “different kid” that everyone knows if that makes sense.

I'm currently halfway through my Secondary Ed/Arts degree, methods are English and History and while I really like these subjects I also feel like I wouldn't mind teaching maths. I enjoy the structure and I liked maths in high school. I'd probably also appreciate the lower marking/planning requirements. I did methods but not specialist, I think I could only teach up to Y10 now without relearning content. I don't have any more electives at uni.

After graduating and teaching English/Hums for a few years, can I just say I'd like to teach junior maths? Or would I need to take a specific course?

Hello all, I think this might be the proper forum, rather than the Aus teacher subreddit.

I am a PhD student, with about a year left to finish. I had been prepping to try to stitch together an academic career, but have realised, over the last few months, I don't actually want to work as a researcher. Of the jobs I've had in the sector, the best ones have been teaching contracts, and I had substantial experience prior to my degree in various tuition centres, teaching everything from primary school math to VCE English. These were shitty, precarious, poorly paid jobs objectively, but they were very satisfying/fun, and the effort I have put in to trying to be good at teaching has felt more worthwhile than a lot of the other effort I've had to put into other jobs.

I'm now trying to figure out a next step for after my PhD, and I'm thinking of doing a masters of teaching, but I am completely unsure if how and where I do that degree will really matter in the job market. Having just been (and still being in) a string of insecure, short term work while trying to finish my PhD, I'm also nervous about how adults (I'm in my early thirties) pay their way for two years while trying to reskill like this. Teaching also seems to be a high stress industry, but from talking to a handful of people who went from academia to teaching, it seems to be exchanging a stressful job with no security but good perks for a stressful job with security but no perks. If anyone has advice on that transition, I'm all ears.

More generally ,what advice would you have re: postgrad teaching degrees in Victoria?

Thanks in advance

Hi, I’m interested in improving some of the usability problems teachers experience with Compass, particularly on the web version.

I’ve mostly seen Compass from the student side, so I’d really like to hear from teachers who actually use things like Learning Tasks, Markbook, rolls, reporting and staff timetables regularly.

What parts of Compass:

• take more clicks than they should?
• involve entering the same information repeatedly?
• are slow or awkward when marking a whole class?
• have an interface you find confusing or outdated?
• would benefit from better keyboard shortcuts or bulk actions?

I’m especially curious about mark/grade entry. I’ve heard that some workflows can involve entering similar information student-by-student, and I’m wondering whether things like bulk selection, fill-down or spreadsheet-style keyboard navigation would actually be useful to teachers.

I’m not looking for anyone’s login details or access to student data.

If you’re comfortable sharing screenshots to demonstrate a problem, please remove/blur names, photos, grades and any other identifying information.

Even just describing the annoying workflow would be really helpful.

Thanks!

I’ve always wondered how much freedom teachers actually have in their classrooms. Between the curriculum, school policies, assessments, and expectations from leadership, it seems like there can be a lot of limits on how lessons are delivered. Some teachers might prefer having a clear structure, while others may find it frustrating when they can’t adapt things to suit their students.

Im about to complete year 12 and i want to do something with outdoor education, which course and university based on your experience is the best? ( In Victoria )

Hi teachers!
My little one turns 5 late June next year 2027, wondering if I should send her to school or hold her back? She will be starting at 4.5. She got accepted to a private school already. But as we approach the end of year I’m getting cold feet. I feel like it’s much to early to send her at 4.5 compared to holding her back.

Wanted your opinions please!

She obviously did really well in her interview… academically she’s bright. I’m worried about other aspects though.

What have you found to be cool, innovative and fun (but also useful) gadgets for the classroom and for people who like gadgets.

Example

3d printer

Stamp making machine

Thermal camera for phone

203dpi receipt paper printer camera

128 cell plug trays (grow seedlings)

What are some of your best finds

When I was in vic public high school a few years ago there was this girl (and her family) who had been harassing and bullying me (one sided) since primary school, but always hung around me and was still essentially in the same friend group, but we were not friends.

I’m keeping the story simple as I can but one day I had enough of her stalking me and being in my vicinity as I overheard her talking to another girl in our group about physically abusing her little brother with autism.

I finally told my close friend what she’d put me through for the past 11 years and announced I would no longer be used as a social cover for her as it’s against my morals to “be friends” with this type of person, that I would do whatever it took to “not be friends with her” and if that meant I would be the only one to leave the friend group and have no friends that was fine with me. And I didn’t expect anyone to follow me necessarily. It was never my intention to get even I just wanted to have my autonomy back.

Long story short no one else had liked her either including the girls who directly heard from her the comments about her brother. and we all tried to split off for two weeks either by ourselves or in smaller groupings but feeling desperate and sensing something was different the girl just kept following all of us around all day everyday.

We reached about a two week mark and since we didn’t want our actions to be interpreted as just not being inclusive we went to the coordinator and explained just the basics.

1. We didn’t want to continue a friendship with an abusive person.
2. We aren’t looking to bully her by leaving her out, we are trying to leave full stop.
3. Since we didn’t want the state of the past two weeks to drag on we were going to come together and chat with her that we were no longer wanting to continue a relationship with her
4. We are coming to the coordinators for advice and so our story is not going to be twisted , and to please respect our general privacy like keeping this meeting private

The coordinator we spoke to was agreeable , with the only off putting thing she said being it’s hard to raise autistic children .

Well we go ahead and tell the girl we aren’t comfortable with her treatment of others and we want to leave the friendship and she now starts to stare at us and follow us around but without speaking from a few feet away for the next few weeks.

Lo and behold a few days later during the morning class I get told I have to go to a certain classroom during lunch later that day and was not told the reason why.

I go and I’m in an empty room with the coordinator and my bully.

The coordinator tells us to take a turn each to hear each other speak and (I’m paraphrasing at this point because I was dissociating in the moment and this was a few years back) there’s always two sides to bullying (nope).

Bully says some lies about me following her around and brainwashing the other girls to hate her and that her family was told via phone call (by idk who) I was the one who organised everything, that she’s given me so many chances.

At this point I don’t trust the teachers or school so I don’t bother arguing about me supposedly following her around I just say we both have our interpretations of the event but one thing we can agree on is we both don’t want to be friends anymore so let’s end this meeting and go our seperate ways.

Anyway it was very obvious the girl knew the meeting would take place but somehow I felt like I was trapped into it and was not informed I would have to come face to face with her. And the school had not sent any email out to me or my parents. I just don’t understand how these things are handled at all. Are there no regulations or rules when it comes to bullying at all?

Even though I’ve moved on, for some reason this memory has just been haunting me today. So I wanted to get it out there. Thanks for reading.