Teacher Magazine (ACER)

Our guest on today’s podcast is Kayla Borg from St Mary’s Primary School in Whittlesea, Victoria. She shares how she went about co designing a podcast lesson for her year 5 and 6 students in partnership with the eSmart team at the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, what her students learned from this experience, and why real world, student led digital learning can have such a powerful ripple effect across the entire school community. Host: Rebecca Vukovic

In our latest reader survey – which we run annually to give our audience the opportunity to let us know about their experiences in the education sector and how we can better support your professional practice through our content – you let us know that you’d like more content on the topic of curriculum implementation. We’ve been hard at work having a look at this on Teacher in the first few months of 2026, and in today’s episode of Teacher Staffroom we're going to take you through some of my highlights from recent weeks. Don’t forget, like all of our other episodes of Teacher Staffroom, we’ll be posing some questions for you throughout this podcast, so you can feel free to pause the audio as you go, gather some colleagues, and discuss together how these stories might be relevant to your school context. Host: Dominique Russell

Today, we're delighted to welcome Mandy Nayton, Educational and Developmental Psychologist and Chief Executive Officer of the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation. Our conversation is going to delve into all things phonics, word study, vocabulary skills, and more. Along the way, Mandy will share a range of practical examples, discuss how this work might look across K-12, and you might even learn a new word along the way, just like I did. Host: Dominique Beech Guest: Mandy Nayton

In this episode, we’re talking about a whole school approach to wellbeing. Our guest is Dr Alexandra Hennessey, from the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester in the UK. Dr Hennessey and colleagues have explored how different schools in the UK have adopted the Well Schools framework – now, that’s a project started by the Youth Sport Trust in 2020. The findings of the study have been published in the journal Frontiers in Education (Hennessey et al., 2025). The team has also published 2 short reads – some school case studies on how the 10 schools are supporting wellbeing in their community, which runs through things like intent, implementation and impact; and then there’s a Well Schools Final Report Executive Summary as well (Hennessey et al., 2023). You can find links to all those documents in the transcript of this podcast over at Teacher magazine. Our chat with Dr Hennessey includes how wellbeing and learning go hand-in-hand, and we’re going to focus on 2 aspects of the study in particular – the role of teacher wellbeing and, of course, the importance of that whole school approach. She also mentions at one stage INSET, and that in the UK, is staff PD, essentially, where the staff get in-service training and the pupils don’t attend on that day. Host: Jo Earp Guest: Dr Alexandra Hennessey

We're joined by St Columba Anglican School Principal Allan Guihot and Director of Professional Learning Chris Delaney. They’re in Port Macquarie, on the New South Wales North Coast, and the school is a member of the award-winning Teaching School Hubs program from Independent Schools New South Wales (ISNSW). The program brings together schools and partner universities to provide teacher trainees with regular, mentored experience while they complete their qualification. The aim is to increase their skills and their confidence in the classrooms, so they’re better prepared once they enter the workforce. It’s a paid placement – trainees get paid for one day per week for a year, which is co-funded by ISNSW and the school. And then, depending on the arrangement, the trainee could also be working additional days as a Teacher Aide (that might be a Teaching Assistant or Classroom Support Assistant where you are), and that additional work is funded by the school, so that is something that St Columba has chosen to do. In our chat, Allan and Chris explain more about the program model and how it works, the school’s participation, and the benefits for everyone involved – including those teachers doing the mentoring. Host: Jo Earp Guests: Allan Guihot , Chris Delaney

We’re well and truly into the new school year here in Australia. In today’s episode, we run you through the highlights from this month, including our round up of some key events happening throughout the school year to help you with lesson planning, and an article that shares 4 design principles to help turn classrooms into spaces that support and celebrate student learning. Host: Rebecca Vukovic

The winner of the 2026 Global Teacher Prize has just been announced. Rouble Nagi from India has been named winner and has taken home the US $1 million in prize money. Rouble was recognised for her work in transforming neglected walls in her community into hundreds of vibrant, open-air learning centres. The GEMS Education Global Teacher Prize is the largest of its kind and is a Varkey Foundation initiative organised in collaboration with UNESCO. It’s now in its 10th year and aims to shine a spotlight on the positive impact teachers make on society and recognise the exceptional educators who have made an outstanding contribution to the profession. One Australian teacher was a top 10 finalist this year – Colleen O’Rourke, Digital Technologies Educator from the Hills Christian Community School in Adelaide, South Australia. She’s been recognised for developing the Nature-Nurture-Network curriculum and for her work in supporting neurodivergent learners. Dominique Russell sat down with Colleen ahead of the announcement to hear all about this work and what it means to her to be recognised in the top 10 this year. Host: Dominique Russell Guest: Colleen O'Rouke

Late last year, the winners of the 2025 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Excellence in Science Teaching were announced. Each year, the 2 prizes – one for a primary school educator and one for a secondary school educator – recognise achievements in STEM teaching. For 2025, the winner for primary school teaching is Paula Taylor, Executive Teacher in STEM at the Academy of Future Skills within the ACT Education Directorate. The secondary school educator recognised is Matt Dodds, Biology and Physics Teacher at Glen Innes High School in New South Wales. We sat down with both of them at the beginning of the 2026 school year to hear all about the work they were recognised for. It was such a delight to hear about the teachers that had an impact on them when they were younger, the lesson activities that are a hit in their science classrooms, and how they’re sharing their knowledge with other educators. Host: Dominique Russell Guests: Paula Taylor, Matt Dodds

Happy New Year from the Teacher team! We hope you’re having a restful break these school holidays and that you can take some time to recharge for the new year. We’re dropping into your podcast feed to share a quick update for 2026.

It has been an exciting year of Teacher podcasts! In this annual wrap-up of highlights from 2025, the team at Teacher select their favourite episodes and discuss why the episodes resonated with them and Teacher listeners. They also chat about how they put the podcast together, how they select guests for each episode, and give a sneak peek of what’s to come in 2026. Hosts: Jo Earp, Rebecca Vukovic, Dominique Russell