r/AustralianTeachers

So I teach secondary public in QLD and I've noticed something among A LOT of the student we are getting. A lot of the students I would describe as 'teachable' and respond well to boundaries, positive praise etc. have huge gaps in their learning.

These students struggle with anything from basic times tables and factorising, to handwriting or book layout!
They genuinely respond and try but what we're doing at highschool just seems like too much for them when we ask them to do it while also doing fairly basic skills like writing or reading instructions/scaffolding.

I'm even seeing a lot of 'pick a random page in the exercise and complete my work there'.

What on gods green Earth is happening in primary schools that -seemingly okay- students are coming through with 'C' grades but illiterate, innumerate or incapable of very basic essential skills?
This is not at all my placing blame on primary teachers, rather I am asking 'what is happening down there? You guys okay?'

One of my middles schoolers (year 7) is dating a boy in the year above her. She was talking about it to her friend and I asked her if she was dating him. This kid is pretty bad fights, abusing staff, the works. Without thinking I said ‘girl, you can do better’. Wasn’t condescending or anything more offhanded. Honestly it just slipped out and yeah it crossed a line. First year teacher, first time I’ve ever said anything like that fwiw.

Genuinely interested in how much leave other teachers are taking within a year. Looking at my Leave History from the past 12 Months on MyHR I have 13 leave entries totalling 95 hours/19 days.

35 hours/7days is unpaid leave for a holiday upcoming later this year (this technically is outside of a 12 month period but still including it as it is already approved and listed on MyHR)
25 hours/5 days is paid sick leave
15 hours/3 days are paid study leave days
10 hours/2 days are unpaid strike leave days
10 hours/2 days are paid reproductive leave days

How does this compare to you? I am genuinely just curious as to how much leaves others are utilising.

EDIT: Also interested in people’s current leave balances. I have the equivalent of 6 sick days accrued as of right now and no LSL.

From today's Reps Bulletin:

"Face-to-face reduction win from last agreement secured

The deed between the AEU and the Department will continue to secure the face-to-face teaching reductions won in the last agreement. The deed will be extended to cover the life of the in-principle VGSA. Our face-to-face maximum teaching will remain the lowest in Australia – two hours per week less than NSW."

I can see why this point might want clarifying given some of the confusion online, but it really feels like it's being touted as a "win" here.

I can't help recalling how all the concerns around those reductions being dealt with in a separate deed back in 2022 were met with assurances that it was "just the way the government wanted to account for things" and that the reductions were safe as houses, wouldn't need to be bargained for again, etc.

Really didn't think I could be any more disappointed with all the spin, but here we are.

i work part time (3 says a week) as a grad. there is an 8 hour long PD for my specific team on sunday; what ate my rights? do i contact the union?

For context, I have only worked at one school, in my second year of teaching now, and am applying for a domain leader role at the same school. I am an upcoming graduate teacher.

I am externally applying for the position and so far have 3 references: one being the Literacy Learning Specialist / my Direct Mentor, another being my Clinical Educator (both having observed me countless times and can speak to my skills), and the final reference being my discipline’s Professor from university having taught so much.

I have not listed my Principal as a reference as for my last successful application with the school for a permanent classroom teacher role next year I didn’t list them then too. They also don’t have much witness to my teaching as the other two references plus we have a great professional relationship. My school is definitely less hierarchical in nature.

I was also thinking I didn’t include the former domain leader, now leading another domain, who coached me for two years at the school.

So with this in mind, are my three referees fine? Is adding a fourth too much? And if not, who should it be?

My school is doing a survey for students on the feedback staff give them. Normally this would be fine but my school has a massive "shaming teachers" culture. Today I see the survey and it asks the students to name the staff that provide them with feedback.

I just know they're making a list and its not to help some people improve.

Worse yet with stuff like this the demanding kids will always feel they dont get enough feedback and the rest will put as much effort into answering these surveys as they do with reading the feedback they get. So either way we get in trouble. I miss when the job was more about growth and less about outcomes for job applications.

This is for the “No” voters for the VIC in-principle agreement. Anyone else have useful resources we can share around on our socials?
I’ve seen some good comparisons, etc… but I thought maybe gather them in one spot here?

BTW… I haven’t fully fact checked this FB resource but I was thoroughly entertained by the memes in the reels 🤣

Teaching has always been a challenging career. For those long term teachers:

1. do you think things have changed? If so, in what way?

2. What would you change immediately if you could?

View Poll

I have recently been diagnosed with inattentive ADHD - unfortunately can't take medication as wanting to fall pregnant - but the plan in the long run is to do so. I was a career changer from ten years in healthcare but felt I burnout fast (within 2 years) so went over to the not for profit sector. The issue now is I'm bored as hell. Did you find medication was helpful - I also take an SSRi and now have support from a psychologist. I've gotta be honest I don't think I can hack full time as I'm pretty soft but I do love the kids and the actual teaching. I think we can make it work financially but my resume is a dog's breakfast at this point so don't want to make any big moves (again) yet

I'll preface this by saying that this post isn't really about whether or not the vgsa is a good deal or not, moreso about the lack of communication I feel we receive. I just hope these questions get answered at branch meetings.

Justin is so disappointing and this briefing didn't really answer any real questions or give any additional information that would have been helpful. Like, why didn't we push above 28% even after the leak? Why did you agree to an agreement that ends in December and not earlier? Why over 4 (4.5-5 technically because of the government's delay) and not over 3? Why no reduction in meetings, or tightening of wording to address schools doing 4 50 minute meetings a week, or 3 60 minute meetings?

So many important questions. The only one answered was the confusion over the deed hours vs agreement hours caused by misinformation spreading. Not even going to talk about the obvious frustration among a large part of our union.

So that's our union? And if I want to change it I have to either do it myself (and leave the job I enjoy) or hope that someone better comes along eventually? Urgh...

Public school Sydney high school teacher.

I have nothing left.

I love being teacher and can’t imagine doing anything else.

But I’m just dead inside.

When I leave at 3pm, I feel so overstimulated. I feel like crying but I can’t. My mind hurts and I’m too numb.

The other day I pulled up in front of the shops after school to do some grocery shopping and saw one of my best friends outside. I didn’t go in. Instead I sat in my car until I saw her leave. The only reason for this was I literally had nothing left inside me to give. I wouldn’t have been able to manage a conversation. It made me sad thinking it’s come to this - I couldn’t even go and say hi to a good friend of mine because I was so tired and overwhelmed from work.

I can’t explain it. Whenever somebody needs help in my faculty, or is going through something tough, I feel nothing. I smile and say all the right things but inside I just want to curl up into a dark corner and not see or talk to anyone.

In the classroom, I’m fine. I teach and I talk with the students and you’d think nothing was wrong.

When I got home today my kids were wanting things from me and I just lost it.

All I want to do is curl up in a dark room.

I work FT and can’t afford to drop days. I can’t afford to go casual. I have no long service leave.

I don’t know what to do. I love my students. But my HT isn’t supportive and I have to keep the majority of my sick days for my children.

This job is killing me.

Thinking about seeing if I can break into University Lecturing

One of the things that would make me hesitant to make the jump is if I’d be able to return to teaching. What happens to my pay scale if I leave and then return later?

I’m in QLD but other states are welcome to respond too

Scared by voting no we may be doing an icarus.

28 percent over 4 years is the largest ever pay rate increase we have ever been offered as teachers. Is it enough to catch up to make up for 2022, probably not. But it helps and can be used later to catch up more.

It took nurses 6 months to renegotiate a new deal... after voting we have like 3 before government wont be able to do anything and it all comes down to an election that liberals or even one nation could possibly win. I hate they could but thats the reality... do we honestly think they would offer us anything better.

Are we really wanting to risk going like queensland union now forced to do 3 percent pay rises while we wait for the court system to figure out a deal.

We get new leaves with the reproductive leave. More ways to use our personal leave with the extra day we can use whenever for whatever. We get at least 3 more student free days we can use for whatever.

As much as i loathe it even if we get down to 1 meeting, we wont be keeping the year level domain one that we prefer, it will be the same very boring meetings that we have to do to tick off our vit registration.

Do we think there is enough time or that the government is not likely to say well lets wait until post election if we vote no.

Its an okay deal but there is a lot that could be worse.

Also we have only hit 7 percent inflation once during covid... 5 percent is very rare as well where we may only be seeing that one month this year right after the war.

Thoughts?

Hi there, a fairly straightforward phone call to a parent about some low level but persistent behaviour issues quickly devolved in them shouting abuse at me ('you're the fucking worst teacher, you're a fucking asshole, I want my kid taken out of your class" etc). I maintained my composure and ended the conversation as promptly as possible.

I have had difficult and rude encounters with parents before. This one was pretty unhinged, but not particularly menacing. When I reported this to a coordinator I got a measure of sympathy, but not much more.

This encounter did not leave me scared, but it did leave me indignant. I am inclined to post an Edusafe report out of principle: that verbal abuse at teachers is simply unnaceptable and that the school leadership needs to do something (even a token effort) about it.

On the other hand, I am somewhat concerned that posting Edusafe reports when the incident is not a whopper creates a boy who cried Edusafe situation with leadership.

penny for your thoughts..

EDIT: I Edusafed it. Thanks for the support. I agree that paper trails = evidence of the conduct that is more visible to higher ups..

I’ve been booked as a relief teacher in the same class every Thursday for the rest of the term. It is not a contract.

The classroom teacher emailed me saying I’ll be teaching science and drones/STEM, attached the C2C Queensland Gov science unit plan, and said to speak to the teacher next door about the drones.

I know I’m “just” the relief teacher, but it doesn’t sit right with me that I’m expected to use my own unpaid time to plan and prepare lessons for an ongoing cover role.

Interested to hear other teachers’ thoughts — is this normal/expected?

EDIT: I’m a permanent teacher to this school, but currently on Mat leave no pay / but doing relief work 2 days a week. The school asked if I could do every Thursday. I said yes as long as I didn’t have to sign a contract (don’t want to muck up future mat leave payments)

I'm on my first teaching placement and I've been in bed for several days with a fever, a cough, and, well, everything you can imagine.

And now I'm wondering if this is what my future will be like. I don't remember exactly how many times my teachers got sick at school, I just know that many teachers at my placement school (a primary school) are sick right now.

What do experienced and veteran teachers think? Do you also catch whatever the students have?

Just about to start my first contract as a year level coordinator. Has anyone got any advice or comments on what I should expect?

I teach at a Victorian high school. I dont like doing workplace visits for students on work experience. It cuts into my planning time and sometimes it's just unrealistic. Last year I was assigned a 90 minute round trip to visit a student. The vice principal said it was possible to do that in a double period because a double period is 100 minutes long. I told the vice principal I called and they said "no it's called a workplace visit for a reason"

What I'm asking is what happens if I choose not to do it? Can they actually punish me? I have end of semester exams from my year 10s and 12s, assessments from my year 8s and planning. I dont have time to leave my desk for these things

My understanding is that in the ACT public secondary schools are split into 7-10 or 11-12, with a few 10-12

But how does one teach in such a school? Surely it's difficult to get a full load based solely on Year 11 / 12 subjects? (even if you could, it sounds like a nightmare?)

Or do they usually teach multiple subjects?

Or do they usually teach at two schools (one Y7-10 and one Y11-12)
In which case why not just have a 7-12 school so that teachers won't have to commute between schools?