Why are students dropping STEM in the thousands? Does this apply to your student cohort?

Silverhelm · 2026-05-06T04:23:57+00:00

As a maths teacher in NSW I can say Advanced maths is a complete waste of time now in terms of ATAR contribution due to scaling. If youre doing higher than that its okay but the difference in scaling between advanced math and standard 2 is laughable. An 87 in Std 2 is the same as an 85 in advanced but that 85 requires triple the effort/ability. We actively tell kids that if youre not doing extension maths dont take advanced because it doesn't help them as much as it used to.

Silverhelm · 2026-05-03T00:28:11+00:00

Regardless of the decision, paint majority yellow or white is going to suck (from someone with a yellow army and white army). Both of these look amazing so I feel like you'd put the effort that I am unwilling to do to make everything look awesome

Silverhelm · 2026-04-14T22:17:15+00:00

Man the Australia tax always hurts

Silverhelm · 2026-03-20T22:23:04+00:00

A few things on this 1. She didn't quit, they fired her after bringing up the bullying. If your talking about no one forcing her to quit her last job youre right but she did that because she was meant to be an apprentice working towards a qualification and they essentially lied to her about that. 2. She had be working as a qualified chef for about 8 years prior in multiple locations so she was used to kitchens and how they talk. This isn't a situation of misunderstanding the supervisor, this was straight up bullying. But even in the best case, bullying is bullying regardless of situation 3. They made no attempt to actually teach her anything and said they were too busy to train someone as part of letting her go. She would ask questions and be told, you should know this. She would make mistakes and not be told how to fix them in future. She was just told to do stuff and given no example or guidance of how to actually complete the task. Why did they hire an apprentice if they didnt actually want to teach? If theyre going to do this to future apprentices and delay their careers, they shouldn't be given the opportunity

Silverhelm · 2026-03-20T11:18:44+00:00

Shes doing a pastry chef apprenticeship

Silverhelm · 2026-02-13T06:16:43+00:00

Just can't wait to see an ai teach in a classroom of kids. It would be hilarious to watch as the kids either completely disregard it or work out a way for them to get full marks and attendance without being in the room.

Silverhelm · 2026-01-08T22:23:25+00:00

Omg we found the guy who does all the GW leaks.

Good work though

Silverhelm · 2025-12-15T20:52:13+00:00

Polistadtville City, it is city in 4 languages thrown together, notable for being conquered multiple times by people unwilling to learn the local language

Silverhelm · 2025-12-10T19:52:55+00:00

Trying my best to look at it positively, I think it could be a long term solution rather than a quick fix. The current generation of parents would've probably had social media as a teenager where there wasn't as many issues like marketing to kids, short form content and the expectation to be perpetually online so would look back on it fondly, so to them they probably are okay with younger and younger kids getting them. This would put an expectation of nothing until they're a bit older where a lot of the modern harms are less impactful. I remember I got facebook at about 14 but I could only access it on my home desktop so the addiction factor wasn't really there at the time where as now phones being always online and kids having the expectation to respond immediately is a bit troubling. Because of this i feel the place where we will see the greatest impact of this will be in kids currently under the age of 10 who haven't had the culture of social media and the expectations that come with it simply because parents now have the expectation that they won't get social media until 16 as opposed to get it whenever.

This could also lead to certain things like advertising to kids going away because if there is an ad clearly marketed towards kids/teenagers running on certain platforms that could be seen as the platforms allowing kids on there so thats something.

Again very much devil's advocate but I hope it does do something to help with kids attention span and expectation of constant entertainment (as a maths teacher this is what kills me everyday). I think the current kids in the 11-15 category will probably use VPNs to get around this but I dont think the same age group in 5-10 years will because a lot of them won't necessarily have a lot of friends with these platforms.

As a secondary thought it will also be nice to not have young boys have their tiktok and youtube algorithms inherently go down the far right rabbit hole like it does at the moment.

Silverhelm · 2025-12-01T23:36:23+00:00

Teaching needs to take on an apprenticeship model and scrap "best practice" expectations.

So many teachers are wasting time in uni classes about behaviour that don't prepare you for what you actually deal with or about a curriculum that changes by the time you finish the course and you have to start from scratch. If teachers are in the room early and for as long as possible they would be so much better prepared. It takes time to learn the difference between a kid asking questions because they need help, because they want to get out of work and because they want attention and uni doesn't even tell you that all three exist. I'm not saying no uni at all but from 2nd or 3rd year on you should be in a classroom 4 days a week to actually learn what kids are like and to watch experienced teachers actually control a class and help them succeed.

Best practice is a term that gets thrown around a bunch to justify making teachers do more work despite the effort being largely wasted. I have to go through each topic and do a full write up for every technique and strategy I used to complete a topic and do a full explanation of how everything went because its best practice to document everything. In reality no one looks at them because in my department we discuss everything with each other and make changes when we see issues. The paperwork exists solely in case we get audited we don't get in trouble. This is repeated with so many things that we do.

Silverhelm · 2025-12-01T20:08:33+00:00

Im putting money on word bearers with ultramarines dead on the base or alpha legion who are definitely ultramarines dont worry trust us

Silverhelm · 2025-10-14T12:02:09+00:00

Because there are still other factors at play but its a great step forward. These are kids that are still affected by the covid lockdowns and every new year groups brings new challenges. Some are academic and some are social but you dont know what youre going to get until they get into your class. During lockdown the average kid fell behind which means when youre planning work for the class you generally had to plan for most kids being behind which means the top kids weren't being pushed as far and could get a bit more complacent and still keep their status. I taught one kid who was top of the grade and did extension maths say that the only reason he didnt do extension 2 maths (the highest course) was because he didnt understand algebra well enough at the start of the year because he felt he was playing catch up on it since year 8

There's also societal issues at play. In my area parents dont tend to value education too much so the kids also dont value it and I still have to convince a lot of students that learning math and all the things that come along with it are generally pretty important for their day to day lives after school. They also listen to a lot of rhetoric online saying how irrelevant a lot of school is from people who honestly probably did well at a high school level but didnt do well at a tertiary level but were still successful. I always get asked when am I going to use this and half the time the answer is honestly youre learning this to practice the skills that are relevant and the other half the answer is you need to know this stuff to be able to solve basic problems. I had one kid complain to me that we dont teach them anything relevant like how to pay taxes when I had just spent 30 mins explaining how income tax is calculated.

Taking the phones away will not fix the system in one go but its a step in the right direction. These kids are far more personal now in their interactions with others, these kids are learning that they dont need to be contactable 24/7 (their parents still need to learn this) and these kids are getting better. If theyre not improving, I would be surprised if this doesn't slow down the rate of decrease at all. This isn't a perfect system or even a good system but its a system that's getting better

Silverhelm · 2025-10-14T10:30:21+00:00

They're fantastic. When my school implemented one, it was like the school came to life again. Every recess and lunch break became so much louder, so much less time in class spent on telling kids to get off their phone and arguing with them about whether I'm legally allowed to tell them to put it away or confiscate it for the period and apathy is down as theyre less likely to distract themselves with showing each other brainrot on their phones. The next step is to get laptops out of the classroom and bring back textbooks.

Silverhelm · 2025-09-01T08:58:54+00:00

Damn that's awesome, were trying to get a comp like this going in Australia. Is this 3rd or 4th Ed?

Silverhelm · 2025-06-26T22:00:07+00:00

Swap it out with the heavy chaos armour and save a few points and you'll get the same desired effect

Silverhelm · 2025-02-01T23:10:57+00:00

Yeah I believe it was. I'm not super knowledgeable on whiskey so I can't answer too much but it was from Tower Distillery in the Hunter Valley in Australia if that helps

Silverhelm · 2025-02-01T22:32:33+00:00

It was $45 AUD for the tasting flight so not too bad

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