Welcome back to a brand-new year of Teacher. As usual, we’re kicking things off with our round up of the key themes and dates for 2025 – that should provide some extra inspiration and resources for your lesson planning over the next 12 months.

Aspect runs autism-specific education programs in New South Wales and South Australia. In this Leadership Q&A, we speak to Joanne Tisdell – Principal of Aspect South East Sydney School – about supporting students on the autism spectrum, including curriculum content, collaborative partnerships and the design of teaching and learning spaces.

For the past 8 weeks, we’ve been sharing the stories of our Teacher Awards 2024 winners. In our final profile on this year’s winners, we speak with Alison Morley from St Canice’s Primary School. She’s been recognised as winner of our Special Contribution Award for her commitment to the teaching profession, the Arts and the wider school community. 

‘Tech-savvy doesn’t necessarily mean privacy-savvy.’ Teacher talks to Julie Maclean, co-author of a new report into student smartphone use, about how a generation that has grown up with technology is failing to mitigate the risks, and what schools can do to help.

We know, from a decade of Teacher reader survey feedback, how important the topic of wellbeing in schools is to educators. In this article, we find out how the winners of the Teacher Awards 2024 Improving Health and Wellbeing Award are improving student wellbeing in their context.

In this Teacher Awards 2024 winners’ profile, we chat with the executive team at Cessnock High School in NSW. Winners of our Leadership Award for Driving School Improvement, we hear about how they’ve transformed school culture and improved academic achievement.

A free new competition from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) recognises high student achievement in Literacy and Numeracy. Here, we celebrate the inaugural award winners and talk to educators about the value of challenging their high-achieving students.

Educators refer to multiple forms of student data to help them plan out the next steps in teaching and learning, including informal feedback, classroom conversations and written assessments. As Dr Anne Knowles explains in this reader submission, student drawings could also be a useful addition to your toolkit.

‘Many teachers sensed … a marginalisation of other key learning areas, including HPE.’ In today’s article, Dr Jessica Amy Sears discusses the findings of an Australian study into the current status, staffing and teaching of Health and Physical Education in New South Wales government schools.

In yesterday’s reader submission, Dr Sunaina Sharma and Wendy Lang discussed their high school students’ anxiety over oral presentations. In this second article, the Ontario teachers share 4 strategies they’ve implemented to build the same speaking and listening skills while reducing the stress level.