FRIDAY, October 31 marks World Teachers Day to celebrate the amazing teachers across Australia who inspire, support, and empower our children and young people every single day.
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Ltd (AITSL) is encouraging the community to wear a hat and take a selfie and share it on their media wall as their data suggests that teachers face some of the highest stress levels globally.
A whopping 87 per cent of Australians agree teachers deserve more recognition and seven in ten people say a teacher made a lasting, positive difference in their life.
The AITSL’s Australian Teacher Workforce Survey highlighted that teachers find their work deeply rewarding with around 89 per cent saying their job makes them feel happy at least some of the time, but the top stressors are leading more than half to report some level of burnout.
On top of delivering an education, teachers say the challenges include heavy workloads, time pressure and emotional demands.
AITSL Chief Executive Tim Bullard invites everyong to tip their hats in recognition of teachers.
“We know that quality teaching is the most significant in-school factor influencing student learning,” he said.
“On Friday, October 31 for World Teachers’ Day, we want to shine a spotlight on the expertise and dedication of our teachers and encourage everyone across Australia to tip their hat in recognition of the vital work they do.”
Patience, empathy, and dedication are the most desirable qualities a teacher can possess and, in that order, according to recent survey.
Anyone, anywhere can show their appreciation of a teacher but by using the AITSL media wall the message can be shared across the country, and it is also a great way to see what others are saying about their teachers.
The Hats off to Teachers campaign has free social media templates which can be downloaded and used to elevate a message along with printable hats, posters, and thank-you cards to make it easy and fun for children to show their appreciation.
It is easy to show up on the media wall, simply post on Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram and use #WorldTeachersDay2025 and tag @aitslrespectively so your message is on the wall for everyone to see.
To shine a light on a teacher, visit aitsl.edu.au/worldteachersday
VCE STUDENTS across Australia are hitting the books as they study for exams in preparation for further study options and exciting careers, organisation and stationery is its companion.
Usually, students have at least four exams and each comes with a copious amount of resources to review in a short period of time; so, introducing a colour for each subject can make retrieving its data quick and easy and create more time to focus on the material.
It’s never too late to get organised, is it?
Study sessions are best performed in a peaceful, tidy area, with minimal distractions. If you haven’t already created one, now’s the time!
It’s also time to make a daily commitment to study around school, employment, sport and family activities.
Passive activities such as watching TV may need to be delayed or rescheduled until study sessions are finished.
Begin a fresh, gather all papers and equipment related to the exam and the coloured stationary you have chosen for its subject.
Research suggests that the week before an exam is the ideal time to revise information for its test as during sleep the information is processed and stored and it is easier to recall when its recently been seen or done, also that handwriting helps commit information to long term memory.
After reviewing the material it’s time to discriminate on its importance or relevance to your future exam.
Is the material easy to understand?
This could be an indication that its contents have been committed to memory, and perhaps its contents only need a glance, if the opposite is the case, indicate its importance with a colourful tick using a coloured high lighter or post it note to help it stand out.
When it comes to packing up your study session you can further organise papers by sorting them as priority learning and placing those into a plastic pocket, so they become a portable study resource.
A traditional desktop calendar and a diary are useful to help organise a study time table with a matrix of colour guiding organisation rather than hurried scrawl.
Electronic devices, while distracting, can assist good study habits with alarms set to motivate the beginning, middle and end of a study session.
Scheduling time to spend with family and friends and also opportunities to rest and do the activities which bring you joy is important to create balance and confidence to help move through the challenging chapter of exams.
Preparation is the key to finding ways to make reading, writing and solving problems fun and routine.
A good study session usually lasts 40 minutes and it is an investment your future self will thank you for.
Good luck to all the students taking exams over the coming weeks. You got this!
THE Wallan–Whittlesea Road, yet another local carriageway rotting quicker than granddad’s teeth, has once again become a symbol of bureaucratic brilliance.
Instead of fixing the potholes large enough to host a family of wombats, we’ve been blessed with the presence of not one, not two, but three trucks big enough to tow the Titanic, crawling along, painting fresh white lines over crumbling bitumen. Because nothing says “job well done” quite like a shiny stripe on a surface that resembles a lunar landscape.
There they were, locals lined up in their cars, watching paint dry, literally, while trapped behind the last of these mechanical behemoths. The irony was thick enough to fill a pothole.
Once upon a time, roadworks were scheduled with some respect for the public. Crews worked through the night or during off-peak hours, aiming to minimise disruption. These days? Road closures, detours, and gridlock are the norm. The convenience of the public now ranks somewhere below a wet sandwich on the Department of Transport’s list of priorities.
It’s the same story everywhere – rail lines shut, power cut, and chaos unleashed. All seemingly timed for when the most people are affected. One might think the goal isn’t maintenance, but misery.
So yes, thank you to whoever decided that a fresh coat of white paint was the urgent priority for a road that’s disintegrating under our tyres. Nothing like cosmetic surgery on a corpse to make us all feel better. If only someone at VicRoads could be bothered to look past the pretty lines and notice the gaping holes underneath.
And if you think that’s bad, try catching the train. The Seymour line, supposedly a vital regional link, is now a punchline. Constant closures, endless bus replacements, and schedules that would make a Swiss railway planner weep.
The line has become the state’s favourite toy for upgrades, yet somehow it only ever seems to get worse. Passengers have swapped timetables for therapy sessions as they endure yet another temporary shutdown that drags on for months.
It all paints a pretty bleak picture of modern infrastructure management, a world where appearance trumps substance and inconvenience is just part of the deal.
No wonder one is left wondering if anyone in charge actually drives these roads or rides these trains. Maybe when the next round of “upgrades” rolls through, someone might remember that the purpose of public works is to serve the public, not to test their patience to breaking point.
YOU learn, when there’s a man in your life, once a new purchase is made, to grab and stash the instructions as men do not read labels or follow directions!
If you don’t, you are so often going to be faced with a washing machine that doesn’t work, or wind up lost on some outback adventure.
What I have learned is to keep the plant’s label, and I also learned that you cannot trust the plant’s label.
‘Luscious deep purple’ would be what my mother called, a violent puce.
‘Needs watering in summer,’ means leave the hose running or it will cark it at the first sign of a moderately warm day.
So, now I read the labels before anything gets its place in the garden.
Google is consulted, and internet gardening pages are also asked the question.
Take the Fiddlewood tree…
Labelled as ‘aromatherapy,’ it promised the utmost perfumed delight. I bought it.
At home, Doctor Google said its bark is used to make violin cases!
The gardening forum people said: Do not plant it, it grows to 20 metres, it gives some people hay fever, and the pretty perfumed flowers make the lawn slippery.
Thud.
Browsing the local nurseries, reading the labels often causes me to think.
Take the humble Leonotis: The plant is known for its medicinal and mild psychoactive properties.
The Red-Hot Poker plant label reads: ‘It should not be consumed or used in any medicinal application.’ Who eats Red Hot Pokers?
I haven’t noticed any of the local birds staggering around with their eyes rolling.
The thing about garden labels is to keep them!
Nothing is worse than buying a plant that grows to be so magnificent that it is much admired and if you haven’t kept the label, you look like a goose as you drag your toes into the grass and say, well, I don’t really know.
At least if you have memorised the label, you can dazzle them by coming out with the scientific name.
“Ah yes! My Syzygium Australe… beautiful, isn’t it?”
They really do gasp in admiration, but the fact is, that it’s just a new form of Lilly Pilly.
The football season may be over but the arrival the other day of a faded sepia postcard was a reminder of a memorable day at a “bush” footy venue just on forty years ago. I wrote about it in one of my books “Shadows on the Green” sadly, a number of people named in the story are gone from this life.
The story is maybe a reflection of an era when good people were not burdened in so many ways as they are today.
A large crowd assembled at Narrandera, deep in the Riverina on that distant day the the above photograph was taken.
A well loved Irish priest Father Hartigan loved the Riverina District and its people.
And writing as “John O’Brien” and famous in folklore for his “Round the Boree Log” and other verses, he penned nostalgic lines, many of them hauntingly evocative, of the people and places of this area in earlier times.
During a long weekend in the eighties the ACK footballers and supporters travelled north into this friendly and hospitable region where across the generations periodic drought has not dimmed the spirit of its people.
The Assumption contingent made the trek north at the invitation of the local football committee to play a curtain raiser to a pre-season clash between Sydney Swans and North Melbourne.
***
Far from the big cities and often hidden in the recesses of the minds of city politician and bureaucrat, the region and its inhabitants, like their rural counterparts throughout the nation, remain the true heart of our land.
Narrandera, a pretty town of some 6000 inhabitants -and a leafy green oasis after the long, rather dreary drive north from Jerilderie – hosted the country day game between the Sydney Swans and North Melbourne on the Sunday. The fans came from near and far to fill the superbly picturesque Narrandera Oval to capacity.
Nearly 9000 was the count, and they flocked in droves from the bigger regional centres of Leeton, Griffith, Wagga and Junee, and also the tiny whistle-stop “towns” such as Boree Creek, Grong Grong, Matong, Barellan and the like. Even a large contingeht turned up from distant Lake Cargellico and Ungarie – Daniher country.
In brilliant autumnal sunshine – fortunately the temperature had dropped from a scorching 39 degrees on the Friday to the pleasant mid-20s – the occasion took on a picnic atmosphere with hundreds of families picnicking on the grass verges inside the boundary fence.
***
They came from near and far
A day at the football in the bush is invariably an important social occasion: a gathering of the clans as town and country folk mingle, acquaintances are renewed, food and drink is consumed, and for a few hours cares and worries are put aside.
The early game, an invitation one, was keenly contested by a Riverina district combine and an XVIII from my own college at Kilmore, and the action kept the big and enthusiastic crowd happy as they awaited the Swans vs North clash.
This was considerably delayed due to some dispute at Sydney Airport which for a while grounded the Swans. Not a murmur, though from the “ring” when the ground announcer informed us of the hold-up.
The game finally started but proved a little one-sided to the slight disappointment of the throng, the majority of whom it seemed were barracking for the Swans.
Rival coaches Tom Hafey and John Kennedy were strained and intent as the practice clash action unfolded.
A coach can rarely relax, such are the demands of the job, Hafey, though, did manage a smile or two near the end, and indeed he had some reason, for the Sydney side, bolstered by its summer purchases, gave signs that it would be much more competitive in 1986.
Healy (ex-Melbourne) and Neagle (Essendon) in particular provided real ballast.
Not much joy, however, for North’s John Kennedy – one of the great coaches, I believe, and he clearly headed for home deep in thought.
Chief focal point in the hordes of young, and not-so-young autograph hunters was not any particular player, but rather the doctor’s wife, Leanne Edelstein, who, for a period, distracted attention from the field of play.
It is impossible at a country football outing not to meet many people. Some I spoke to were old friends; others were newcomers, one or two of them in the “bush legend” category.
Like Dan Clarke, veteran newspaperman and sports buff, then over 70 with a lifetime of devoted service behind him. He’s still going strong though and he is so widely known and regarded that letters merely addressed to Dan Clarke, NSW, have reached him in home town Narrandera.
Bill Howitt, for years a dedicated teacher and sports coach – and tireless community worker, and wonderful person.
And Keith Savage, a diminutive character, full of heart from near Griffith. Apparently he was quite a cricketer in the area in the early post-war years and his 408 in a semi-final still stood then as an Australian record.
Gary O’Connell was a farmer from near Lockhart, a footballer of note in his earlier days and for a long time a driving force behind the Osborne Football Club.
Osborne is neither a town nor a hamlet, just a farming district with an oval and pavilion out in the “sticks.” But if teams like Osborne are allowed to wither and die, then part of our great winter game, and indeed part of our heritage, dies with them.
Charlie Guy, a sprightly octogenarian, greeted me like a long-lost son.
Charlie played for Assumption.in 1915, at the time, a staggering 71 years ago. It was marvellous to meet a man of clearly indomitable spirit from a distant era. He told me proudly that Fr John Begley SJ is his nephew.
Tony Keogh, a farmer from Currawama; Geoge Flagg, from the land near Bareilan; Des Angove from Lockhart; Bill and Nevill Mitchell, long-time locals; a namesake from Boree Creek; Bob Henry another legendary bush cricketer from tiny Kamarah; Mick Daniher – tireless worker in football’s cause from Wagga, the list could go on and on – all sincere and genuine people, all part and parcel of the Riverina scene.
Far from the madding crowds they and their families live and work with much concern for their fellow citizens. They are truly Christian in outlook and practice and to talk to them all made it a more memorable day at the football.
***
A young Shane Crawford, AFL Hawthorn Football Club legend and 1999 AFL Brownlow winner
Assumption across its 133 years history has been schooldays home for many illustrious students. On the playing fields of winter and summer such names as the following list announced themselves as stars of the future: Simon O’Donnell, Neale Daniher, Shane Crawford, Jon Henry, Keith Savage, Tony Armstrong to name just a few.
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