We’re right at the beginning of a new school year here in Australia. That means most of you are busy setting up your classrooms, meeting new students and establishing relationships with them and their families. In today’s podcast special, we’ve spoken with several winners from last year’s Teacher Awards to ask them their most valuable tips, strategies and priorities for starting the school year off right.

The Culturally Nourishing Schooling project aims to champion Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural inclusion and genuine long-term engagement in First Nations communities across New South Wales. In today’s article we speak to Julia Dimitriadis from Matraville Sports High School about how the program has helped her to feel more confident to incorporate Indigenous knowledges and cultures in her classroom.

In our first reader submission of the new year, Dr Rebecca J Collie shares findings from her latest study showing the link between teacher motivation, wellbeing and retention, and how this can help school leaders support staff.

Teacher dips into the pages of Leading Professional Conversations: Adaptive expertise for schools, the new book from Emeritus Professor Helen Timperley. This exclusive extract discusses the importance of firstly establishing the purpose and focus of the conversation, and some things to think about before diving in.

In this expert Q&A, Lisa De Bortoli – ACER Senior Research Fellow and National Project Manager for Australia for PISA – explains what the latest test results tell us about students’ skills and knowledge, and how schools can use the data to inform teaching and learning. She also shares early findings from PISA’s student and principal questionnaires.

It’s time for our annual podcast highlights episode for 2023! The editorial team at Teacher have selected some of our favourite episodes of the year, across a range of different series, and will be chatting about why we enjoyed them and why they resonated with our audience so much.

School Assembly is the podcast series from Teacher that explores what it takes to build a new school from the ground up. In episode 5, we talk to Jo Camozzato, Principal of Bemin Secondary College, about the physical build at the dual campus site.

The Future-focused Mentoring initiative has been working with teachers in 2 Australian states. In this project update, the research team share findings from analysis of conversations between teacher mentor and early career teachers, implications for practice, and what schools can do to support genuine and authentic learning partnerships.

School Assembly is the podcast that explores what it takes to build a new school from the ground up. With Bemin Secondary College due to open its doors for the first day of the 2024 school year, things are getting to the pointy end. In this episode, we talk to Principal Jo Camozzato about putting together the school mission, vision and values.

Highly effective schools apply their resources in a targeted manner to maximise outcomes for students. In Sydney, the Narrabeen Elanora Student and Teacher collaboration is comprised of 4 local schools and enables the sharing of facilities and resources. In this episode, we speak to 2 staff members about the collaboration.