KEEPING UP WITH TEACHING

Strategies for Thriving in the 21st Century

Celia Di Iorio and Margherita Ghezzi

Published in 2024 by Amba Press, Melbourne, Australia

www.ambapress.com.au

© Celia Di Iorio and Margherita Ghezzi 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover design: Tess McCabe

Internal design: Amba Press

Editor: Brooke Lyons

ISBN: 9781923215122 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781923215139 (ebk)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

Contents

Acknowledgements

A note from the authors

Introduction

Chapter 1 I feel like I belong at this school

Chapter 2 I am a successful teacher

Chapter 3 I can really be myself at this school

Chapter 4 I am good at helping students learn new things

Chapter 5 I feel like people at this school care about me

Chapter 6 I have accomplished a lot as a teacher

Chapter 7 I am treated with respect at this school

Chapter 8 I feel like my teaching is effective and helpful

Conclusion

About the authors

References

Acknowledgements

To our families, Rohan, Lily, Angelo, Jason, Lexi, Mavi and Maurizio. Thank you for your never-ending love.

To our furry family members, Maui and Elvis. Thank you for creating a sense of calm and reassurance.

To Professor Susanne Garvis and Associate Professor Wendy Goff, a heartfelt thank you: your guidance and support has been invaluable to us.

To Emma-Kate Comito: thank you for your insights as a graduate teacher, we wish you every success as you keep up with teaching.

To our fellow colleagues, in particular Luc, Ebony, Michael, Rhonni, David and Louise. Thank you for your continuous support and insightful contributions to our book and for the positive impact you make to our profession.

To Amba Press. Thank you for giving us the opportunity and confidence to get our words and thoughts out into the world.

A note from the authors

Dear graduate teachers,

You’ve got this! How do we know? Because we were once graduates ourselves, and have survived and thrived as teachers in the 21st century. Marghi graduated in 2005 as an international student and went on to work as a secondary teacher and later in the publishing, curriculum development and higher education sectors. Celia graduated in 1999 and went on to work as a primary school teacher and wellbeing leader, later joining Marghi in the higher education sector. This is where we first met.

We became great buddies, connecting through our shared passion for teaching and learning, and supporting pre-service and early graduate teachers. We spent many hours over the years discussing our own experiences in teaching, the challenges our teaching profession faced and the adaptability and resilience teachers need to thrive. Teacher wellbeing underpinned all our discussions, along with the importance of developing a healthy balance between personal and professional identity.

From as young as we can remember, teaching was our dream, and it’s who we are at heart today. Teaching is a unique profession where moments of chaos are followed by clarity and vice versa. The emotions you will feel are real, from the triumphant highs of a student succeeding to the challenging lows of things not working as planned. But through it all, there is one thing that remains consistent: a teacher’s ability to make a difference, one lesson at a time. You can do this not just for your students, but for yourself as well.

If we could turn back time there are a few things we would tell our graduate selves. So, from us to you, here are the most important things to keep in mind:

Be kind to yourself, and remember that learning is a cycle of adapting and growing.

Develop reflective practices. Ask yourself, what went well? What could I do differently next time? These simple questions can help you remember your successes, which we often forget.

Set goals you can achieve and boundaries you can maintain. For example, when you have finished writing five report cards, take some time to do something for yourself.

Ask for help. If you don’t know, ask. Spend time making connections with your colleagues and find someone you trust who will answer your questions.

Remember that you won’t always see the impact you are having immediately. But one day you will receive a card, a note or an acknowledgement from a student that will make you smile far beyond the end of your career.

Finally, don’t worry. With time, things became easier. The initial panic dissipates and the stuff that you stressed about becomes second nature.

Remember, you won’t always be a graduate. One day you will be an experienced teacher. Remember the lessons you are learning and the opportunities you’re experiencing so that you too can pay it forward.

We wish you every success.

Celia and Marghi

Introduction

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a teacher is the important role you will play in the community. Teachers are role models and influencers who can help transform and shape a student’s life. As Loris Malaguzzi said, ‘We need to redefine the role of the teacher as one who is constantly learning along with the children, as opposed to simply imparting knowledge upon them.’ With this in mind, we must remember how our emotions impact our thoughts and relationships not only with others, but with ourselves.

In the Australian context, we are fortunate to teach in a country that is rich in remarkable multicultural influences, which enrich much of what is taught and how. This can help positively motivate us on our teaching journey and provide reminders that our actions have consequences, and our words have great power.

While recognising that teaching is, indeed, a strongly compliance-based profession, this book aims to redirect attention to your mental and emotional wellbeing as a graduate teacher. We consider you as a whole person, focusing on the bigger picture to support health and happiness. This will ultimately support you in building positive relationships with students, parents and colleagues, which contributes to everyone’s wellbeing in a school community.

Each chapter focuses on a key wellbeing standard from the official Teacher Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire – an eight-item self-report rating scale for measuring teachers’ job-specific wellbeing (Renshaw, 2022; Renshaw et al., 2015). It comprises two subscales: school connectedness, and teaching efficacy. Scores can be used as standalone wellbeing indicators or summed to create an overall teacher subjective wellbeing composite score. This survey is recommended by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) to ‘scale’ educators’ wellbeing for research.

At the start of each chapter, you will find words from influential masters who have shaped education. As you read through the chapters, keep these words at the forefront of your mind, allowing them to inspire you to never give up and keep working on being the teacher you want to be.

Each chapter also begins with a story outlining an individual educator’s lived experience. We will use these experiences to help you identify key learnings and draw possible solutions and strategies for survival and progress.

Each chapter ends with some final words. This is where connections between the influential master quotations at the beginning and the content throughout meet, leaving you with food for thought.

Let’s dive in and get started! Time to reflect and make things happen.

Chapter 1:

I feel like I belong at this school

Through others, we become ourselves.

– Lev Vygotsky

Marghi’s story

I spent the last few months of my initial teacher education (ITE) degree stressing about my English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) background. Here I was, an experienced teacher from Italy, retraining to become a teacher in Australia, and the only thing I could focus on was my accent. I hated being asked about it.

I remember that all my ITE peers back then were stressing about something. There were other pre-service teachers who had different cultural backgrounds like me, but I could only see the worse in me. My stress turned into fretting. Would I belong? Would I be able to conform to the idea of what others thought a great educator sounded like?

No matter how much we learnt about equity and diversity, somehow I could not shake that feeling of not belonging. Would anyone ever want me as a teacher? Would students accept me? Would parents accept me? Would my peers accept me? I was ultimately, in my own self-assessment, placing myself in the category of not being good enough to belong to the profession of teaching in the Australian context. The fact that I had years of teaching experience on the other side of the world, had received positive and encouraging feedback from my mentor teachers during placements, and had successfully completed the IELTS English test, anxiety precluded me from thinking clearly.

After all the stressing and fretting I graduated and began the process of applying for teaching positions. To my utter surprise, I received a call offering me a position as an EAL/D, Humanities and Language teacher at a school in Springvale, Melbourne. To this day, I still remember thinking how desperate the school must have been to hire me.

I spent the lead-up to my start date thinking about how to better myself and be the best version of myself. At least, that’s what I made myself believe. Really, I was thinking about how to hide who I was and be what I thought the school wanted me to be.

Then my first day of teaching in Australia arrived. I stood at the door of my classroom welcoming each student in my best Italian accent, and it was at that point that I realised not only did I have an accent, but so did two-thirds of the students and parents who were walking through my door.

Slowly I started letting go of the feeling of having to hide or change who I was. Instead I started focusing on how who I was could support my students’ learning journeys. With this, my sense of belonging grew. It was not always easy to manage students in a highly multicultural context, and many graduates before me had left; but I knew I belonged there.

Building your story

It can be challenging to find the time to reflect on yourself and your practice. Taking the time to reflect is an effective