Shae Martin

My opinions are my own (just in case I annoy anyone... :) )

[Tom Rogers @RogersHistory]

🗑️ 10 things schools can bin off (IMO) because every little helps:

Asking teachers to log behaviour incidents - get someone to come round to classrooms with a laptop and do the recording of incidents dictation style rather than asking a teacher to log into software and click about 50 buttons to log something, then blame them for not ‘why wasn’t it logged?’ - if a 5 period day, there is literally no time to log.

Excessive morning briefings - email, zoom, record, whatever. But that 5 minutes also involves a 5-10 minute walk and then potentially afterwards a rush to a registration room and a more stressy start to the day. Also if morning messages are just a quick fire stress bucket, then this is just a horrible start to any day.

Marking - just let teachers do what they want, if that means no marking, fine. Why? Limited evidence it makes much difference to outcomes.

Compulsory twilights on CPD - let each teacher take ownership of their own CPD to do as and when they want to do it. Teachers will put the time in, let them dictate when that is. Flexible working rules from 2026 may spell the end for compulsory events of this sort.

Mad Behaviour systems - don’t make teachers go through insanely arduous warning systems (that’s your 4th warning/C4/L4 etc) and then same children end up back in same room lesson after lesson. They get to 3rd warning, avoid getting sent out, restart again next lesson. Adds workload and stress.

Phone calls home - demanding teachers call home and asking why they haven’t when behaviour is poor. Thee last thing a teacher has time or willpower to do after a full day is make a series of calls. By all means if teachers want to, fine, but if not - no.

Static PPA - go flex - let teachers take PPA wherever they want. Oh, and if someone had a funeral, let them go to it.

Recognising solid work - no bells and whistles, just consistently in and doing it in the classroom, not much outside? Great - that’s the core job. Please praise big style in an authentic way.

Undertand what teachers are doing that goes unnoticed - the little convos that make a difference to a student but don’t tick any performative boxes. Little convos add up to lots of time - don’t punish teachers for doing this by then highlighting when they are behind on the easily visible stuff.

Parents evenings and reports - just make them as incredibly easy as they can possibly be. Cut corners. Chill the hell out.

There’s more than this but I may need to do a part two! 2️⃣

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@aliceleung Congratulations Alice! Such a well deserved award!

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

The best way to spend the last two weeks of Term 3. 🥰

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

My day. Demonstrating catalysts to Year 11 Chem.

[janie kibble @janiekibble]

Offered without comment. NSWTF Annual Conference. @TeachersFed

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@norchcity It was insane how well this worked. Almost the whole bucket of pens were intact at the end of the term. It cost me $1 worth of chocolate a week. I gave raffle tickets out all the time for everything. Still only cost me $1. Worked a treat.

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@norchcity I had this issue. Then at the start of the term I got stickers and made little flags on pens with every students name. Told them it was their pen and if it got lost or broken that’s it. Then gave a raffle ticket for every student who had their own pen. Drew it once a week.

[Canva Education @CanvaEdu]

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[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

Fiddling around with graphic notes to model effective note ‘making’ with my students. I attended HSC PL today, I always learn so much and I’m always keen to test new things out with my class!

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@pruecar I have been waiting on a new laptop to do my job with - my current one is a brick and wastes so much of learning time shutting down randomly etc. I was told today all fundings been cut - no laptops. It is an essential tool for my job. Thanks… 😡

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@naomicfisher So now all of the other kids just miss out because organising excursions is not a mandatory requirement of my job. So it doesn’t happen anymore. Is this fair?

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@naomicfisher I organised an overnight excursion to the zoo last year. Several kids who went had significant behaviour records and I was told I had to take them due to ‘exclusion rules’. It was the most stressful and chaotic night of my life. I had a panic attack a few days after. Never again

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@FixingEducation I had a good kid write in their assessment task ‘idk my teacher didn’t help me’. I was likely dealing with the handful of students dedicated to ruining my lessons day after day. It breaks my heart. It’s not fair on anyone.

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@aliceleung haha I just talk about making Devon sangas… 😜

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@JasonClareMP @AlboMP My science budget has been significantly cut this year. I have had to can many pracs kids love simply because we can’t afford them. We can’t provide scaffolds and booklets like we used to for kids with high learning needs because the photocopy budget is cut.

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

probably a lot of tradies working at a site away from a toilet. Security guards? Checkout assistants or retail workers in a shop by themselves? I used to work at a servo from 6-11 by myself on a Sunday morning and I couldn’t leave the till unattended so I just had to hold it.

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

Reading comments on twitter about parents angry that their child cannot just walk out to use the bathroom anytime they want at school got me wondering about occupations that require bladders to be held for at least 2 hours… teachers, surgeons, truck drivers, any others?

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

Testing a claim with Yr 12 Investigating Science. Turns out Freddio frogs ARE 12g each…

[Shae Martin @shaejarvis]

@aliceleung And that's not including all the prep required before hand - writing an assessment, marking and providing feedback, recording marks, scanning and uploading everything into monitoring folders etc... And most teachers have approx 150 students across their timetables! 🤔