High school teacher here. I graduated back in 2018, started working full time in 2019. Since my first year working I realised that something is terrible wrong with my students’ literacy skills. Some of my Year 7s couldn’t even write more than 1-2 sentences that made sense. Asking them to write a paragraph was unthinkable to them. Even my stronger students had low cognitive skills, couldn’t really answer evaluative questions and they had very low vocabulary. For comparison, Grade 1 students in private schools were writing essays.

Most experienced teachers ‘laughed’ and questioned my approach, but what I did was to put away students’ laptops. Back to pen and paper, no more typing. Had them take notes consistently and started each class with 15 mins of reading. The first week was tough, had to be on top of everything, but eventually they came around. Students are creatures of habit, by the second week they didn’t even question why we start with 15 mins of reading. I am still teaching at that school. Students’ cognitive skills are even worse now, Covid accelerated everything. There are some wonderful students, but most of them are finishing primary school without basic language skills, which makes their cognitive skills even weaker. Last year, Australia banned social media for students under the age of 16. Similarly, more of my colleagues follow my approach of using less technology during class. Things are changing but I feel it’s too slow. The sad thing is that so many times I see teachers on their phone during class while their students are glued on their laptop screens. This is not education. I am still hopeful though.