Our guest for this episode of School Improvement is Judith Weir, Principal of Our Lady of Mercy College (OLMC) Heidelberg. We caught up with her at the start of the school year here in Australia, to talk about leadership, strategic planning, how to balance competing priorities, the impact of COVID on student wellbeing and the importance of professional mentoring.

Host: Jo Earp

Guest: Judith Weir

As a teacher, how can you best manage when a student in your classroom makes an inappropriate comment in the middle of the lesson, catching you off-guard and disrupting other students too? What about when this behaviour happens in the playground? And, what if the comments that they’re making are offensive?

In this episode of Behaviour Management, we unpack these questions in-depth with our two guests – Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the Master of Applied Behaviour Analysis at Monash University, Erin Leif, and Russell Fox, Lecturer in Behaviour Analysis, also from Monash University. We also delve into how school leaders can best support their staff in this area in this episode.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guests: Dr Erin Leif and Russell Fox

As we’ve seen demonstrated time and time again over the past two years, school communities have been innovative with their technology use to ensure a continuity of learning for students throughout the disruptions to school. In our first episode of Teacher Staffroom for 2022, we're sharing with you some recent pieces of content from us that demonstrate how technology is supporting schools in Australia and beyond.

In today’s episode we're going to get you up to speed on all of these stories, and also some more of our highlights. And, like all episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions throughout the podcast, so feel free to pause the audio as you go, gather some colleagues and discuss together how these stories might be relevant to your school context.

Host: Dominique Russell

Each year, two educators in Australia are named winners of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching – one primary school teacher, and one secondary school teacher. For 2021, the primary school teacher named winner was Megan Hayes from Mudgeeraba Creek State School in Queensland, and Scott Graham from Barker College in Sydney was the recipient for the secondary teacher award.

We caught up with both Megan and Scott late last year to find out a little bit more about the work they’re doing in the classroom and in their wider school community. We’re bringing you these conversations in this episode.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guests: Scott Graham and Megan Hayes

The high school years are an important steppingstone to future study and career opportunities, but it can also be a difficult time for some students. So, how can teachers and leaders support teenagers who are not engaged with their studies or who may be at risk of dropping out of school all together? Our guest on episode 72 of The Research Files is Professor Joseph Ciarrochi from Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Positive Psychology and Education. He’s the lead researcher for projectHOPE – a program that’s notched up success in re-engaging at-risk secondary students with their schooling.

Through projectHOPE, students are connected to qualified mentors. Now, the particularly good news is that researchers found that just a 15-minute online mentoring session once a week made a big difference. In this episode we’ll find out more about the research team, how the program works, and the impact on students – including their wellbeing and engagement at school.

Host: Jo Earp

Guest: Professor Joseph Ciarrochi

In Australia, we’re at the start of another school year. That likely means new students and possibly a new learning space to set up. For those students who are moving up from preschool or primary or for those educators who switched jobs in the summer, it could mean getting to grips with completely different surroundings at a new school. In this special episode, we’ve gathered a panel of experienced teachers and leaders, who will be sharing their priorities, strategies and tips for those first few weeks and for a successful year. There’s some great advice on things like classroom displays, professional learning needs, authentic activities, positive behaviour management, keeping on top of your email inbox and there’s lots more – so, let’s jump in.

Host: Jo Earp

Guests: Rebecca West, Holly Millican, Nicole Wilson, David Webster, Lisa Seewraj, and Alex Wharton.

Happy New Year from the team at Teacher magazine. In this bonus podcast episode, we’re delighted to share with you a sneak preview into what we have in the pipeline for Teacher podcasts in 2022.

Host: Dominique Russell

Here we are at the end of 2021 and it’s time to look back at all of our podcasts from the last 12 months. Join the Teacher team in this episode as we cast our mind back and share our personal favourite episodes from this year.

Hosts: Jo Earp and Dominique Russell

In today’s episode, we're delighted to be joined by Rebecca West, Deputy Principal Instructional Leader at Bonnyrigg Public School in Bonnyrigg, about an hour west from Sydney in New South Wales.

Rebecca was this year named a Top 10 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize. She was selected from over 8000 nominees from over 100 countries, and has been recognised for her work at her primary school in supporting students with additional needs and refining the school’s professional development program so teachers can work through identified areas more in-depth than ever before.

The Global Teacher Prize is an annual prize presented by The Varkey Foundation which recognises one teacher for their outstanding contribution to the profession. The winner takes home US $1 million, and this year that winner was high school English teacher Keishia Thorpe from Maryland in the United States. We’ll be catching up with her in the new year, so be sure to subscribe to our free Teacher bulletin at our website, teachermagazine.com, so you never miss a story.

In this episode, Rebecca shares more detail of her approach to ensuring all student needs are met, how collaboration between staff is key to improving student outcomes, and why their professional learning is conducted in three-week cycles.

Host: Dominique Russell

Guest: Rebecca West

As a school leader, what’s your response to negative events or difficult situations? In the upcoming school year, what areas might you choose to work collectively with staff on improving? We’ve unpacked these questions recently at Teacher, so in this episode we’re looking at leadership.

Host: Dominique Russell