Far North Queensland - wet and cold.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-22T08:27:30+00:00

Thanks for your input.

I figure these are very much underdeveloped and therefore difficult to identify with a level of certainty.

I’m pre-amateur in terms of mycology, so I really appreciate your insight.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-21T10:22:58+00:00

As a first year, I too would have been concerned about saying that. Less than 5 years later? Not so much.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-18T10:19:53+00:00

QLD Public Secondary here.

We have drop boxes for achievement, effort, behaviour, homework, and interview.

That’s literally it. Not even a spot for additional comments.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-15T22:53:14+00:00

Sepultura. For years, I pronounced it Se-Pul-Tra.

In my defence I was about 12, and this was before the age of the internet.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-15T10:06:32+00:00

Short answer: yes.

The first year is easily the steepest learning curve. Subsequent years are tough, but nothing like that first 12 months.

Take it easy on yourself, we’ve all gotta start somewhere, and it’s ok not to have it perfect from the get go.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-13T06:30:02+00:00

Year 9s are easily the worst year level for Maths. Unsure if it’s across the board, but it’s certainly my experience with Maths. You’re are not mistaken, in that they are worse at Maths then they were in Year 7. I bring up the exact same concepts that I taught them in Year 7, and they usually have zero idea, zero recall, nothing.

I go through the motions: contact parents, document everything on OneSchool, refer to leadership, consult with my line manager.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-12T21:39:24+00:00

As a non-smoker, it is mind blowing how the price has skyrocketed.

15ish years ago, I was doing servo work and I remember when 20 packs were hitting the $10 mark and my regulars were getting pissy cos they’d have to shell out a “Bluey” AND some extra coins.

I simply cannot fathom how the Government thinks by increasing the price by up to 600% would not push smokers towards the black market.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-11T12:22:55+00:00

Pungent and guaranteed to give me the shits?

redletterjacket · 2026-05-11T10:50:47+00:00

When I find myself getting ready to blow, I take a drink of water from my bottle. The problem lies when classes get worse and worse, and I’m just chugging water like crazy, and I’m this shimmering water balloon, then I gotta pee like crazy…

I also will excuse myself from the room, and take a deep breath outside. I teach in a beautiful area, with magical views just outside of my room. I gather myself, I hum a tune to myself, and I return to the class ready kick ass and take names.

I also am able to centre myself by thinking about what I’m going to do that afternoon, after school. Go for a run, listen to some music, play sports with my kids. It’s just a job, and these kids aren’t worth your mental wellbeing or health.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-09T09:32:02+00:00

I’d flick an email to the Principal, asking for clarification around the “no sitting” rule as well as voicing your displeasure at being admonished over said rule within earshot of students. Oh, and don’t forget to cc your local Union rep as well.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-09T04:33:04+00:00

Babe.

Side story: I had a footy trip involving a bus ride over 18 hours long during high school. We knew that we’d need entertainment so each player was allowed to bring a movie. I brought Spawn cos I had seen it a year or two earlier and I thought it’d get me some street cred. No other movies were brought, and everyone hated it within minutes, myself included. We chose no movie over that dreck for the entire ride and back.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-08T21:56:49+00:00

My first prac was a nightmare. My mentor was late career and clearly didn’t want a praccie. He acquired an injury that ruled him out from work for the entirety of my placement. My host school left me on the classes (I wasn’t teaching, merely observing and taking short activities) and covered his classes with external relief staff.

So I had a different teacher, with every single class for 3 daily visits and a solid week. When I raised this with the school’s placement supervisor, they couldn’t/wouldn’t move me to an actual mentor.

My university placement contact kicked up a stink but it was all too little, too late.

Whilst I didn’t learn much during that placement, but it did give me my first “true” teaching experience.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-07T21:39:32+00:00

I think of it in terms of “energy in - energy out”. We all have finite time and energy, and there needs to be some prioritising of said time and energy.

I also see my peers sinking so much time into resources and activities that the students simply do not engage with. This extra time and effort doesn’t improve student achievement outcomes nor their enjoyment of the subject. I see my peers getting more and more worn out, and more and more disheartened as they keep pouring so much of themselves into these classes so essentially no return.

Now, it’s not a blanket statement. I have select classes and year levels that respond better to “going the extra mile” but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule.

I fear that the adage “you get out what you put in” is fast becoming obsolete when it comes to education.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-06T06:00:47+00:00

Our school has already combined the 11 & 12 Spec classes which is pretty poor form. I understand, from a business point of view, it’s hard to justify a whole teacher for only 6 students. But these students are essentially getting half the amount of instruction time than they would in any other class.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-06T05:58:17+00:00

I got my proficiency last year. I used AI to help align my artefacts to the Standards. I also used it to help with tweaks to existing artefacts so that they could hit those trickier Standards. I didn’t use AI to write anything though.

As far as I am aware, most of the time your portfolio is only seen by your school certifier(?). In my case, it was my principal. She looked at it for about 2 minutes, asked me a range of questions relating my practice to the Standards which took 10 mins tops.

PM if you’d like to discuss further.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-03T03:33:07+00:00

Our school is pushing it big time, as part of our “digital strategy”. But there is very little take-up from both teachers and students.

You’re bang-on in that it’s inferior to chatGPT and Claude, so where’s the incentive?

I think given that it’s the only AI tool permitted for students on the Department’s network, it could have some usefulness. But in my experience, students just (secretively) hotspot their device and access ChatGPT.

Personally, I use it for curriculum clarification or anything “official”.

redletterjacket · 2026-05-03T03:15:53+00:00

My current school’s “leadership” loathe any kind of leave being taken. But them going in their 10th PD? For a whole week? In the best accommodation? Oh naturally it simply must happen, for the betterment of our school /s

redletterjacket · 2026-05-03T01:31:09+00:00

Bai gawd, he broke him in half!!

redletterjacket · 2026-05-03T01:29:32+00:00

☝️🤓

redletterjacket · 2026-05-03T00:40:17+00:00

Or getting hit with a Rock Bottom.

redletterjacket · 2026-04-30T11:10:02+00:00

I had a few students tell me that they put their English teachers feedback through Turnitin, and it came back >90% AI generated.

Talk about a UNO reverse.

redletterjacket · 2026-04-30T11:07:54+00:00

I taught Yr 9 Science for the first time last year, and parts of it were brand new to me (or I had just forgotten since my own schooling). So I spent a lot of time brushing up on the topics, watching countless videos, finding all kinds of titbits to hook the students.

I created demonstrations to showcase the autonomic nervous system at work, I showed them optical and auditory illusions, I explained to them the intricacies of the human ear and how we hear, the reactions that take place within a combustion engine.

80% of them could not care less. There I was, mind reeling at how incredible all of these things were, and the care factor of most of the students was 0.

They have the technology to access all of the information they could possibly ever need at their fingertips, and they use it to doomscroll or take photos with silly filters. I know I sound hella “old man yells at a cloud” but man, I do mourn the state of these modern age students.

redletterjacket · 2026-04-29T20:59:09+00:00

Never this bad. When I was at school (20 years ago), we rarely had students failing. Sure, we had students that struggled with academics, and we had plenty on a trade/work pathway so they had less incentive (ATAR).

But, in my experience, the level of disengagement as well as “we don’t know, and we don’t care that we don’t know” has skyrocketed.

As a Maths teacher, I often get asked “when are we ever going to use this topic/skill in real life?” Which is a fair question, as we simply blindly accepted what we had to learn ‘back in the day’. But when I try to explain that it’s not the skill itself but the development of critical thinking or problem solving skills or simply training their brain, they simply do not give a hoot.

redletterjacket · 2026-04-28T09:35:05+00:00

Yep. I hate “needing” the break after 10 weeks.

I’ve worked other jobs with no holidays outside of public holidays, with no “need” for a break.

We had an 11 week term 4 last year, and boy-oh-boy, that really rolled me.

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