Hello and thanks for tuning in to this podcast from Teacher magazine, the resource for K-12 educators published by ACER, the Australian Council for Educational Research. I’m Rebecca Vukovic.
We’re well and truly into the new school year here in Australia and as always, here at Teacher, we’re here to support you with content and resources – all freely available on our website. For those of you who are new to our Teacher Staffroom podcast series, each month we join you to share highlights from the past 4 weeks on Teacher – including podcasts, columns, infographics or articles that we wouldn’t want you to miss. From time to time, we also share comments that you’ve posted on our content, or any other important info about the publication.
Throughout every Teacher Staffroom episode, we pose reflection questions. We encourage you to pause the audio, perhaps gather some colleagues, and consider these questions in your own school context. If you do this regularly, we’d absolutely love to hear from you. You’re always welcome to get in touch to share your stories or ideas. Email us, give us a call, comment on an article or engage with us on social media. We love supporting the important work you do, and are always striving to bring you content on the areas you need more support. Okay let’s jump into today’s episode.
As is tradition now at Teacher, we kicked off our editorial content for 2026 with a round up of some key events happening throughout the school year to help teachers and school leaders with lesson planning, term by term. From the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, to National Simultaneous Storytime, to NAIDOC Week and National Science Week – there are plenty of events and celebrations happening over the 2026 school year that you should have marked in your calendar. What’s more – many of the event organisers have started to share their curriculum-aligned resources and lesson plans, so it is worth taking a look at the article and planning ahead.
Once you’ve done this, consider these questions:
After reading the article and the key events and themes mentioned – which do you anticipate will tie in well with your teaching topics this year? What opportunities are there to work with colleagues in other curriculum areas?
Still on the topic of starting off the new school year, regular Teacher writer and Professor in Educational Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Rebecca J Collie, shares new research that examines teachers’ social-emotional confidence at the beginning of the school term. Her piece also explores the role of school leader support in fostering this confidence, and how it is associated with wellbeing later on in the school term.
Here’s a quote from the article:
Study results showed that teachers who perceived greater autonomy-supportive leadership support at the start of the school term experienced positive gains in their social-emotional confidence at the end of the term. This means that teachers who felt more supported by school leaders when the term started went on to report greater social-emotional confidence several weeks later. For instance, teachers who felt supported through practices such as receiving clear explanations for school-wide decisions, or being offered choices in professional development opportunities, were more likely to report increased confidence in managing social-emotional experiences by the end of the term.
After reading the full article, consider these questions:
As a school leader, do you provide clear reasons for implementing new policies or expectations, so teachers understand their purpose? Can you think of an instance where this has worked well? What impact did this have on the teachers’ social-emotional confidence?
Any teacher will know that setting up your classroom for the new school year is a big job. They also know that students learn best in calm, organised and purposeful spaces. Classrooms can sometimes be overwhelmed by good intentions; every wall covered in colour, slogans and displays competing to be seen. At some point, decoration and displays intended to support and celebrate learning cross into distraction.
In an article on Teacher this month, Victorian teacher and designer Andressa Bassani shares 4 design principles to help turn classrooms into spaces that not only look good, but work for supporting and celebrating student learning. We’ve already had such a positive response to this article from our readers, I’d love to share some of your comments that were left on the article:
One teacher said:
This is a very important, informative and useful piece of work. I think classroom display is very important and not talked about enough. I will use your insights to inform my practice.
Another person said:
As a teacher that has always struggled to achieve a visually orderly and pleasing space, this article has been very helpful.
Another one said:
Great read and insights! I’ll consider this for my daughter as well at home, and also for the corporate shared spaces!
As I said, we love to hear from you. Once you’ve had a chance to read Andressa’s article, I’d encourage you to think about these questions:
Looking at your current classroom displays, or thinking about your existing plans for the term – do they all serve a clear learning purpose? Which of the 4 design principles discussed in this article (they’re visual hierarchy, empty space, readability and decorating with purpose) do you already use? Which could you strengthen?
It’s always nice to start the school year with some positive stories and I have 3 to share with you today. Firstly, the Global Teacher Prize was announced this month. The GEMS Education Global Teacher Prize is a Varkey Foundation initiative organised in collaboration with UNESCO. Now in its 10th year, it recognises exceptional teachers who have made an outstanding contribution to the profession. Each year, one teacher wins US $1 million in prize money, and this year’s winner was Rouble Nagi from India.
She was recognised as a pioneering educator and acclaimed artist who has transformed neglected walls into hundreds of vibrant, open-air learning centres. Rouble Nagi creates large-scale educational murals that go way beyond decorative artwork to provide communities with interactive spaces teaching literacy, numeracy, science, hygiene, history, environmental awareness, and social responsibility. Check out the full article to learn more about her incredible work.
The Zayed Sustainability Prize winners were also announced last month at an award ceremony at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. I was lucky enough to be there to see the 2026 winners named. Each year the Zayed Sustainability Prize recognises small and medium enterprises, nonprofit organisations and high schools who are delivering practical, scalable solutions to some of the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges.
The Global High Schools category awards 6 high schools from 6 world regions US$150,000 to transform their plan into a scalable project that will deliver impact, innovation and inspiration to their school and local community. Read more about the 2026 winners in an article I wrote over at our website.
Closer to home, this month we published a podcast episode with 2 recipients of the 2025 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching – Paula Taylor from the ACT and Matt Dodds from New South Wales. Each year, the 2 prizes – one for a primary school educator and one for a secondary school educator – recognise achievements in STEM teaching. In this short clip I’ll play for you now, Matt Dodds, a Biology and Physics Teacher at Glen Innes High School in New South Wales, is sharing one of the practical activities he likes to do in his science classes.
Each year I’ve tried to add more and more practical activities to my repertoire. And one of them is using Hot Wheels cars to teach projectile motion. And so, it sounds really simple, but it’s actually quite complex. We set up these ramps of Hot Wheels track on the desk. And the Hot Wheels cars launch horizontally off the desk, and the students have to do all the calculations to work out where to place a cup to catch the car. And the amount of engagement the students have with that activity is phenomenal. The amount of elation and delight they get when they see that car land in the cup is palpable. It’s phenomenal. And so instead of just me doing this in my classroom, I’ve shared that online and just organised some after school Zooms where teachers can drop in like 3.15 or 3.30 to 4.30. They can ask questions. And then in addition to that, I also share the worksheets. So, teachers can take that to their class and run those activities. And that’s just one example. And nothing makes me happier than when sometimes I get a Facebook message or a text message or an email of a video of another teacher doing it at their school. And it’s just, it’s crazy to think, you know, something that is being delivered in a classroom in Glen Innes High School can be also delivered anywhere else in the country.
That was Matt Dodds there. I’d encourage you to check out the full episode – of course you can find us wherever you get your podcasts from.
And finally, in our latest reader survey, we asked you what you want support on in 2026. You gave us plenty of suggestions – leadership, wellbeing, research news, and literacy, just to name a few – and these suggestions will inform our content planning this year. In a new infographic published on Teacher, we present the most popular topic requests we received. Make sure you check it out.
That’s all I have for you today. Thanks for listening. I’ll leave the links to the full articles and podcast episodes, and of course that infographic I mentioned today, in the transcript of this episode, which you can find under the podcast tab at our website. We’ll be back with a new episode very soon.
