Postgraduate Education on-demand videos

How to Become a Teacher Info Session

Good evening, everyone. We're gonna get started. So I'll just get you all to take your seats. I do have some formalities that I need to do to begin with, but I thought because we're all gonna be teachers, I should start off with an anecdote about teaching. And I'm gonna tell you a story from when I was a very young teacher.

We were doing kind of pastoral care in high school, and I taught in a boys' school. I was doing it with year nine. We were making stress balls. To make a stress ball, you get a balloon and you tip rice into the balloon, and then the students can squeeze it and feel much more relaxed.

But it turned out on this particular day, we ran out of rice. I don't know how, but we ran out of rice. And so we had to come up with something else to put in the stress balls. The head of science said, "It's okay, we've got all of this corn flour that we can put in the stress balls." I thought, "Oh yeah, that'll work, you know, I can squeeze it, they'll feel relaxed, mission accomplished. You know, I'm adapting, that's what teachers do."

I had to go out and teach another class and then I came back in to the room, the classroom where all these students were supposedly making these stress balls. And I opened the classroom door and it was like I had walked into a snowstorm because if you get 100 year nine boys who make stress balls with flour, they're going to throw it everywhere across the room- it was an absolute nightmare. But it was a funny story and I thought it would be a nice way to start off our session. Welcome.

I'm going to introduce myself in just a moment, but before we do that, what I would like to do is an acknowledgement of country because I think that's important. So I'd like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose ancestral lands we are meeting and I'd like to pay my respects to Elders past and present and also any people from First Nations who are here today. I'd like to acknowledge and respect them as the traditional custodians and creators of knowledge for this land.

And at UTS, and in the teaching degrees, we have a strong focus, as you will all have, as teachers, on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cross-curriculum priorities.

So, who am I? Well, my name's Keith Heggart, and I am the coordinator for the Master of Teaching Secondary. I'm joined by a panel of esteemed guests that I'll introduce you to in just a moment. But just before I do, just to some ground rules about how we're going to do this, obviously, this is a busy space.

So please, if you've got questions and there will be time for questions throughout the session, please use the microphones and just raise your hand and someone will come and give you a microphone, and you speak into the microphone. There's your first teacher tip, okay? Use your microphone because people who have hearing accessibility needs really appreciate having a microphone available.

For those of us joining online and we've got lots of people who are joining us online, please turn your cameras off and mute your microphones just so that everyone's experience is maximized. And if you've got questions, type them into the Q&A bar at the bottom of the screen and we'll pick those up as we go through the session as well.

All right, we're gonna get straight into it because I'm a university academic now and I could quite happily talk to you for an hour but that's not the idea of the session. Instead, what we wanna do is focus on some key things to tell you what makes the UTS Teacher Education Experience special.

So we're going to have some industry experts who are going to give us some insights and information about career opportunities.

You're going to be inspired by some of our incredible alumni. You're going to discover some of those exciting opportunities that you're going to get to experience when you're in this course, and you're going to learn about the program options and the flexibility involved.

Come on in. Welcome, welcome. You know, if this was my classroom, I'd make you sit right here at the front, but I won't. And of course, you'll get a chance to ask any questions about the course that you might like to.

So let me tell you a little bit about who our guests are. Sitting directly to my left is Dr. Kimberley Presswick Kilbourne. Dr. Presswick Kilbourne is an experienced educator who has taught from preschool to year 12 in independent schools and in teacher education programs, including here at UTS. So it's nice to see you. Welcome back, Kimberly. She's been recognized for her teaching excellence with over 25 years of experience providing professional development for teachers within Australia and internationally, including teachers in Bhutan and Nepal quite recently. Kimberly has a strong background in higher education, and she's got partnerships between schools, universities, and she's the author of many publications. Kimberly is proficient in teaching curriculum development, educational leadership, pedagogy, and research. She is currently in the role of research lead at Trinity Grammar School, armed with a doctor of philosophy in education from the University of Sydney. Kimberley brings extensive expertise to her work. Please welcome Kimberley.

Sitting directly next to Kimberley is Madeleine Musket, who's the head teacher for chemistry at Mount St Joseph School in Mel Perra. Madeleine graduated from UTS in 2020, and in 2022, her students and she achieved remarkable success by securing first place in the state and second place nationally in the national titration competition. If you're a bit hazy on what titration is, that's when you fiddle with the... The burette. Yeah, the burette to make sure that it all evens out and you get the right pH level. Yeah, get the right color. And it is quite competitive, isn't it? I'm not my job. Wow. That's, I'm impressed. Yes, so I wanted to mention that.

And next to Madeleine is Dr. Rick Flowers. Rick is the accreditation director for the Master of Teaching in Primary Education and also the Head of Adult Education and postgraduate programs in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences here at UTS. Rick has extensive, maybe not expensive, that would be different, but extensive experience in education and social change, including literacy and numeracy teaching, applied linguistics, TESOL, and Indigenous studies. He's previously served as a research fellow for the ARC investigating Aboriginal adult educator training needs. He's coordinated a rurally based community development training program and engaged in community work in Western Sydney. I don't think I said please welcome Madeline. So please welcome Madeline and Rick. And I am the Acting Director for the Centre for Research on Education and Digital Society, known as CREDS, and I am branded tonight by Apple. It's just the shirt I put on this morning, I promise. I'm an Apple Distinguished Educator, a Google Certified Innovator, and I spent a long time as a high school teacher and leader in public schools, Catholic schools, independent schools, in Australia, and overseas. And as I said before, I'm the coordinator for the Master of Teaching in Secondary Education here at UTS.

So that'll give you a bit of an idea of who's on the panel, and I'm going to stop talking with our introductions complete. I'm going to hand over to Dr. Kimberley Presser Kilbourne, and we look forward to hearing her overview of the kinds of things that a teacher needs to be inspiring.

Thank you so much. No doubt you have heard a lot in the media about teachers choosing to leave the profession. My story is actually the opposite. So I'm a teacher who started as a primary teacher in my career way back in the mid-1990s, who then became a teacher in the mid-1990s academic and worked here at UTS working with primary and secondary teachers but then moved back to a school.

I made that decision to return to teaching, and I guess it's a story less told, and it's a story that I really would like to share with you tonight because actually for me, the joy of teaching and the energy that I get from being in the classroom with young people and with children, it's highly addictive. I have to say, I really can't think of anything else that is just so rewarding for me. And I can see other teachers who are here nodding.

Because actually, when I think about other things that I've done, that energy and the joy from being with young people and the privilege of being a teacher is one that I think is really quite unique in our society. So I'm really looking forward to sharing my story with you.

I only have a short time this evening, but I'd really like to give you a little further insight into why I think being a teacher is something that you should be thinking about as your career choice. And I can see probably here tonight we've got some people who are still at school or who are recent school leavers who are thinking about teaching. There are possibly people who are thinking about a career change into teaching, and so we're really looking forward to inspiring you to take that next step and to join the teaching profession tonight.

As I said, the joy that I get from teaching is probably the main reason why I teach, but it's also the fact that I have the opportunity to try and create that joy for others. No two days are the same. So if you are someone who really likes to be really well organized, have your day planned, but then it not necessarily go to plan, then having that sort of flexibility, adaptability is something that you might find is a really useful thing when you're teaching.

The other thing is that the energy from being in a classroom with children and young people, the energy from being in a school, and I think for all of us, we've taught in fairly large schools, we've taught in small schools, but when you go to school in the holidays and the children aren't there and your colleagues aren't there, it really is just an empty building. But the way that schools come to life once people are in there learning, exchanging ideas, challenging each other, they are exciting places to be.

Being a teacher has given me lots of opportunities, and I just, I guess at this point, sort of reflecting on the 25 years that I've spent in education, thinking about opportunities I've had, I've worked with at-risk young people as a volunteer at Youth of the Straits. I've engaged in professional learning with teachers in a range of different schools, including as a quality teaching program academic, working with students and teachers in South West Sydney. I've engaged in and with education research, and obviously my role currently at Trinity Grammar School really involves me in working with teachers and with students to cultivate a culture of curiosity within the school.

I've also been really fortunate, as Rick just alluded, I've spent time in developing countries like Bhutan and Nepal working with teachers and teacher educators, but also through UTS taking pre-service teachers to do international professional experience placements overseas, and so Samoa is another place that I've been to, and obviously, we have a lot of Samoan students in Australia, and really having that insight into their culture has enhanced my teaching.

I think there are two things I wanted to add. I wanted to talk with you about around teaching, firstly as a creative profession, because I think for teachers in contemporary schools, one of the things that we really need to do is to think about exciting ways of bringing the curriculum, the syllabus documents alive in meaningful ways for the students we teach.  

And that, I mean, obviously when we've got a national curriculum and we've got state curricula, we really need to think about, well, who is in front of us and how can we make this meaningful for them? So at the moment, I, as a primary teacher, I'm now teaching year 11 and year 12 theory of knowledge in the international baccalaureate. So I guess this is another thing to sort of say that you don't stand still as a teacher. There are things that are always changing and opportunities that become available to you. So in teaching years 11 and 12, I teach a core subject. Students, you know, at that stage are used to having electives; they've had a lot of choice in what they're going to be studying. And I teach a subject called theory of knowledge. Theory of knowledge is epistemology and trying to engage 15, 16, 17-year-old boys in thinking about how do we know what we know. There are certain challenges in that which are actually really exciting as an educator, thinking about, well, how can I design lessons, activities, how can I use technology in ways that are going to make this exciting and so that students want to come to that core class that I teach.

I think the other thing that I am really excited about teaching is the way that we can bring ourselves and our open hearts, I would hope, and our open minds to working with students who we teach. And so, I think teaching is really important, a really caring profession is something that perhaps for some of you is something you're one of the reasons why you're considering doing teaching.

I had a student when I returned to teaching in 2021, I had a student in my class. I was teaching year six, so I'm going to call him Jay. But Jay was one of those students who he was pretty shy, he was pretty self-conscious, he was at that stage in year six where you become really aware of who you are as a young person, and in his case, as a young man. And I really worked hard to connect with him. And I have to say, there were times when, for example, getting changed for sport, he wasn't comfortable getting changed in the classroom, like most of the other year six boys. And we came up, I thought of ways to try and help him to feel more comfortable in the classroom. So it's not only the learning of students and helping them to become interested and engaged, but thinking about their whole well-being and them as whole people. And it was really lovely. When we finished that year, he actually volunteered to be the person that in front of his peers made the speech about the teacher that he had had. Gosh, I think now, what a privilege to have taught Jay. To have helped him to grow to be the young man who was able to stand in front of his peers at the end of the year and wanted to make that speech. Connections with students are key but also connections with your colleagues. And I have to say, I was reflecting on this on my drive here. It's the people that we teach with in our professional learning networks and our professional networks and day-to-day the colleagues in teaching that we have that really make the teaching worthwhile as well. So I hope, I hope that my colleagues here agree, but actually those collegial networks that we establish as teachers are really important in the work that we do as well.

Just to conclude, why should you choose teaching? For me, I think it's a career that allows me to bring my own curiosity, but I think it's a career that allows me to bring my own curiosity about learning, my own curiosity about other people into my work, and also that importance of nurturing the curiosity and the interest of others in learning. I've already spoken about the joy that I experience working with children and young people and about them not only growing in their knowledge and supporting the growth in knowledge but also supporting them to develop as young people, as people who will grow up out into the world and really contribute positively using their talents and their interests in our society.

So I'm really excited that you're here tonight. I'm really excited for the people that have joined us online who are thinking about teaching because, in my opinion, it's a great choice if you want to share your own love of learning with others and to really make a positive contribution. Thanks, Keith. Keith. Thank you." (audience applauding)

- Oh, you're dangerous, Kimberly. I'm here going, oh, I wanna go back to the classroom now. It's the light bulb moments for me. You know, those moments when you can see the lights go on and they're like, I can do that now, and the pride. And you did that, you know? Yeah, that's wonderful. Anyway, sorry, we could reminisce this. Whenever you go to a party and there's teachers, they always find each other and end up talking about teaching. It's just one of those things, all right?

Anyway, so thank you, Kimberly. Now what I'd like to do is transition to hearing from Rick Flowers, and Rick is going to talk to us about the brand new Master of Teaching primary degree. So please, make Rick welcome. (audience applauding) - So the master's is for mid-career or people, not necessarily mid-career people, people who already have a bachelor degree, people who have a bachelor degree and have been in the workforce for some time, and are clear that they want to become a primary school teacher.

To become a primary school teacher requires you to do a two-year full-time masters. This is a requirement that our state government sets and is overseen by the New South Wales Education Standards Authority. And in this two-year program, we will put you at ease into classrooms in real schools, three 20-day placements.

We're not going to just throw you in at the deep end, we will carefully design it so that when you start in your first placement, you might just be observing, but you'll be closely supervised and supported by an experienced school teacher. And by the end of it, you will actually be designing and implementing lessons on your own.

As a primary school teacher, you are a generalist. That means that you're going to be working with a classroom of students over a 10-month to 11-month period and you will be covering a variety of key learning areas: mathematics, English, science and technology, human society and the environment, creative arts and just to reiterate is that we're talking about from kindergarten to year six.

So the program is made up of 16 sixteen subjects. Eight of the subjects, well four of the subjects are about core areas such as how do you teach students with disability? How do we implement curriculum in the field of Indigenous Australian education? How do we design curriculum that supports students who have English as a second language? And then you will accompany the placements, you will then get to do foundational studies in fields like psychology and classroom management and then Coleman, I think in a sort of a portfolio type experience.

As I said, a primary school teacher is required to have knowledge across different key learning areas. And here you see those areas that I've just mentioned. Now one of the newer trends in the primary teacher education space is that there is growing interest from school principals, from the New South Wales Accreditation Authority in primary school teachers becoming specialised.

As I said at the end of the day you are primarily a generalist but we do provide pathways where you can apply to the New South Wales Education Standards Authority, the end, and get an endorsed specialisation either in mathematics, in English or science. What we do is we look at what your bachelor degree was in and we match what you learned in your bachelor degree to what your chosen specialisation is going to be.

The admission requirements do require you to have a bachelor degree and we will look at the content in that bachelor degree and we will provide tailored advice about, we will consider that in order to make you an offer and to provide advice about what possibilities there might be for you to pursue a specialisation.

Most bachelor college qualifications will meet the requirements if you wish to pursue a master of teaching in primary education. We also require you to show us some evidence of you having thought about, well, why do I actually want to become a primary school teacher? So we require you to show us some evidence of you having thought about. to write a personal statement to that effect.

We've been offering primary teacher education for over 40 years. This is the first time we're offering this program for mid-career professionals and people who already have a bachelor degree. So we're very excited. Thank you very much.

I did most of my teaching in secondary schools, but I did go down into primary schools. And I remember in my first day thinking it was incredibly easy to be a primary school teacher because I had all the students sitting very nicely on the rug, and I had the big book, and I was sitting on the stool. And I thought, you know, it's reading time. How easy is this? Nothing to it. Primary school teachers, and I read the book and then looked up.

And the students kept coming closer and closer. And as I read the book, and eventually they were almost sitting on my feet. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, just back off. All right, so what I'm going to do is talk to you a little bit about the master of teaching secondary, which is slightly different. So if you're tossing up where the-- you want to be a primary school teacher or a secondary school teacher, it's important you understand the differences because there are differences in structure, in admission requirements, and all of those kinds of things involved.

The first thing I do want to mention is that there are commonwealth supported places available for some students in the master of teaching in secondary education. If you're not sure what those are, those are government subsidies that might change the cost of the course significantly cheaper. And it's an important consideration to make.

All right, so this is how the master of teaching secondary looks. You'll see that there are really two separate areas, okay? The first area is the core subjects. Those are the subjects that every student, regardless of whether they're going to be an economics teacher or a physics teacher, has to do. And then there are the teaching area subjects. So you have to come here with a bachelor's degree with enough subjects to qualify to teach that subject.

So for example, if you're going to be a physics teacher, we expect you to have a good understanding of physics at an undergraduate level. And I'll tell you exactly what that entails in just a moment. We do not teach you physics. We teach you how to teach physics. And that's an important difference.

Those are often called teaching method subjects and as you see at UTS you can have a choice depending on what your undergraduate qualifications are like in whether you have a single teaching method, so you're just an English teacher, not just an English teacher, you are an English teacher or you are a maths teacher or you might have a combined teaching area. So you might be an English and an EALD.

EALD, English as an additional language or dialect teacher or you might be a physics teacher and a chemistry teacher or you might be a maths teacher and anyway you get the idea okay you can have more than one specialisation. Everybody does the subjects on the left and you can see there are some similarities with the master of teaching primary.

There's a subject that's all about the complexity and diversity of teaching young people. There's a subject about inclusive education and the legal and ethical requirements involved in that. There's a subject about Indigenous Australian education and what that means for all of us. And not just for Indigenous students, but for people in classrooms with Indigenous students and even people in classrooms without Indigenous students.

There are subjects called professional learning, which is what you as a schoolteacher are required to undertake, and that includes, in some cases, a professional experience. There's a subject about understanding and engaging adolescent learners. The adolescent brain is a very interesting thing. And the more, I don't think we ever really understand it, but the more we understand what's going on, the better we can teach them and prepare them.

There's a subject about literacy and numeracy because we are all literacy and numeracy teachers. They are in there as the cross-curricular priorities. So we've got to make sure that we all know that. And then there's a subject about teaching and learning with digital technologies. And then within your single or your combined teaching areas, there are the method subjects and you usually do three of those for a single major and two for a kind of a minor, a second specialization.

And then there are professional experience subjects. These you study. to be called 'PRAC subjects' or 'PRACTICUM', we now call them professional experience subjects, and that's when you go out into schools and you start learning what the craft of teaching is all about. And they're quite long. We do it as early as possible, okay, so you will be out in a school within the first seven or eight months of the course, and you'll do two of those over the course of the whole year. degree.

The reason we do it as early as possible is because it is often the crucial point for people's experience. It's like, "Yes, I can do this." Or sometimes it's, "I'm not sure I can do this, okay? You are supported all the way through." And I'll tell you a little bit in a moment about the kinds of partnerships that we have. And there's also some wonderful electives available about all kinds of subjects.

Like learning analytics. You can pick up other teaching methods if you're interested and so on. So just to give you a bit of a flavor, that's what your program might look like. You can see it's spread out over two years, the autumn and spring semesters. And you can see the professional experience happens at the start of spring in the year one, and then again at the start of, sorry, yeah, at the start of spring in year two. It's just slightly different. different if you're doing a combined specialization.

You can see that there's more teaching methods 'cause you've got to learn to teach two subjects and a few less electives. These are the specializations we offer here at UTS. You can do English, maths, science, and within science, we do biology, chemistry, physics, earth, and environmental science, and HSC is human society and its environment, everyone calls it HISSI, and that's Business Studies, Economics, Legal Studies and Society and Culture.

Some of the combined specializations include English and EALD, like I said, maths and physics, biology, earth and environmental science, chemistry and physics, and then, you know, any combination of business studies, economics, legal studies, society and culture. However, this is important, so please pay attention. really carefully to this. To be admitted into the Master of Teaching, and this is the big difference between the secondary program and the primary program, you need to meet the subject content knowledge requirements.

Those are called the SCKs. Basically, you have to have undertaken the equivalent of three quarters of a year of those kinds of subjects within your undergraduate degree. degree at a range of levels. So normally it's six subjects. So if you're thinking about your undergraduate degree and you say, all right, I did mostly a Bachelor of Science but I did some maths as well, you would need six science subjects, no more than two at first year level and no less than two at third year level in order to qualify for a major in science and you would need five.

Four, usually it's about four, for a minor in mathematics. Now you're probably thinking how am I going to remember this Keith? Come on, we are happy to give you advice and have a look at your transcripts and say you are eligible for this, you're not eligible for that and that's something that's best done on a one-to-one basis simply because every university has got different names for the different subjects and we need to look at the levels and count them all up and do it all right.

So best to reach out for us if you've got any questions and we're more than happy to take those kinds of questions. Just one minor point on that, not all teaching areas can be undertaken as a minor and not all teaching areas can be undertaken as a major either. Okay all right so what have you got to do to get into the course? Well, you've got to have completed a recognised bachelor's degree or an equivalent qualification, and it has to have the relevant subject content knowledge requirements, and you also, just like in the Master of Teaching primary, you submit a personal statement.

I read all the personal statements. I think that's one of the best parts of my job. Seeing the breadth and the diversity of the people who are going to apply to become teachers, I thoroughly enjoy it. And then I get out my red pen and I'm like... No, I don't do that.

Yeah, but we ask you to do that. And in fact, that's fairly standard for entry into any teaching program. And there are some English proficiency requirements for international students, if that's relevant. This is the kind of thing that you put in your personal statement.

You can see that it's just a... there's four questions and I think we encourage you to write about 250 words on the question. Don't try to do it on ChatGPT, it doesn't ever do it right, trust me on that one. I found them out.

Yeah, and you submit that along with your application, okay? I think those are the things that I needed to say there and I guess we're getting to the point that you're... well, actually. Actually, what I wanna do now is just mention why you might wanna study at UTS.

And these are just a few things that apply to the whole of the program. And I'm just gonna pick on some highlights as we go through because I've thrown a lot of structure at you, but now I want to tell you why UTS is a unique and really meaningful place to study.

We put this everywhere, but we are in the top 100 universities in the world, in the field of education and training, and you think of the number of universities in the world, that's pretty impressive. Australia's number one ranked young university, and even better than that, we are the number one research institution in teaching and teacher education in Australia.

So we are the best university when it comes to research about teachers and teacher education and I think that's partly because we have such strong partnerships with our schools and our other partners. The great thing is as a teacher you learn from people who were teachers and you are around teachers throughout your whole program.

The professional experience program at UTS is second to none and I'll just show you what I mean by that. The professional experience is when you go out into... there we go, to partner schools and you practice being a teacher.

We have over 200 partner schools across New South Wales in a range of areas, in rural and remote locations as well as in metropolitan areas and in any kind of sector you can imagine, the public sector, the independent sector, the Catholic sector, whatever. And that just gives you some examples of that.

The kind of professional experience you can undertake. So you see actually during the professional learning subject, you start off with your first professional experience in autumn, in semester one. It's only an observation. It's only for five to 10 days.

I was actually talking to some of my students who've just finished their second day in school. They came back for a session we ran just then and they were like, "Wow." "Wow." Then in spring you spend a much longer time, a 30-day practicum, a six-week one where you do some teaching and then there's what we call the internship in the second year, which is another 30-day practicum with teaching and internship roles and you basically take on the role of a teacher by the end of that. So you are ready to hit the ground running.

One of the things that I am... am most annoyed about, I'll be honest, because it causes difficulties for me, but also most proud of, is that by the time a lot of our teachers have reached that second practicum, they're being asked, when can you start work? Have you got your number yet? That's the number that allows you to teach because the schools recognize the quality that they have and they're keen to employ them.

And I think that's probably the best testament you can have to a teaching education degree. Alright so some other things that are worth thinking about we have a really diverse student cohort we'd be on making things accessible we want you to be able to reach out to somebody and talk to somebody we think that's important we encourage people to get their conditional accreditation as soon as possible so if you're doing your masters of teaching it's a two-year program but you can actually seek conditional accreditation at the end of the first year, and that means you can start working as a teacher in schools at the end of the first year, usually in a casual capacity, but that often goes a long way to easing people's concerns about this degree.

Let's talk about the important stuff, right? Let's talk about money. I used to work for a teaching union and negotiating enterprise agreements was my life, so I get quite excited about pay scales, but I'll try to keep it there. Teachers get paid pretty well. As a graduate, you can expect to earn up to $80,000. That goes up really quickly once you move from provisional or conditional accreditation to proficient accreditation.

Should you pursue further accreditation, it goes up even quicker. And the current... current top of the scale is about $120,000. You could expect to reach that within eight or nine years if you meet all the targets along the way. That's not bad, right? That's not taking into account any leadership bonuses that you might get, which would add even more on top of that. So I think teaching is quite competitive.

And I don't need to say it because we are here. it everywhere but if you're a teacher, especially if you're a teacher in the specializations that we offer here at UTS, people want to employ you. Teachers, especially science, mathematics and increasingly English teachers are very much in demand across Sydney and across New South Wales. And there you go, yes, one of the most in-demand professions in 2025.

Okay. Okay, just a couple more really important dates for you. Please, please, please take special attention of those dates. If you are interested in getting one of those Commonwealth supported places, you need to apply by Sunday the 26th of May. And then second round offers are made on the 30th of June.

International students, it's a little bit different for you, you need to apply earlier 'cause it takes a bit longer. longer to process your application, so you need to apply by the 30th of April if you're outside Australia or the 31st of May if you're inside Australia. If you're going to start this year, classes commence in August. We hit the ground running and we do not muck around, okay? Like I said, you will be in schools very shortly after that.

We do offer recognition of prior learning on a case -by -case basis, so if you've already undertaken... some teaching studies, we're happy to have a look and work out where that might equate to. But that happens after you've been applied and accepted.

And the fees are up there, and you can see the significant savings for the Commonwealth supported places. Alright. Whew. Everyone take a breath. I now get to introduce the highlight of the evening. which is where you get to hear from one of our alumni. So please put your hands together for Madeline.

Thank you everyone I'm here off the back of taking 120 year nine students on a like five hour long hike so it's been a very long day and a very diverse day for me. As everyone has said teaching is just such an amazing profession.

and I think it hits me most. I work at an all -girls school and they tend to write very nice letters at the end of year 12 or very nice letters at the end of the year and as I was cleaning out my room over the holidays I found some of those nice letters and it's just phenomenal.

The things they say one student said I was the reason that they came to school every morning and one of the reasons that they even showed up at all. The reason why why they enjoyed chemistry or, you know, XYZ. And to have that, I mean, to have that said to you is lovely, obviously, but to have it written down is just beautiful.

And to be able to refer to it, there are hard days in teaching. There are definitely hard days in teaching. I won't deny that. There are days where I don't want to be flexible and I don't want to adapt and I have to be flexible and I have to adapt. Sometimes I can get a little bit cranky about that.

But having that... that written down and having the appreciation of the students and knowing that you've made a difference, a significant difference in someone's life is just second to none. It's absolutely second to none.

In terms of my journey, I actually graduated from UNSW with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in chemistry and minoring in mathematics. In terms of why I chose teaching, there's a photo of me, I think I'm four years old with a Bachelor of Science. with a whiteboard.

My dad brought me home a whiteboard from his work and ever since then I forced my neighbors to sit in front of the whiteboard and I taught them how to write stories and how to do math problems and they were very upset with me.

But essentially I've always wanted to be a teacher. I did change my mind as I moved into high school, into the late stages of high school and into my Bachelor of Science. I decided I wanted to work at Syro or Anstow and be a director and all that sort of stuff.

but at the end of the day, I really, this is where I belong. I wanted to be a teacher. My mum will definitely attest to that at the end of the day. It probably would have been easier for me to stay at UNSW and do my degree at UNSW because I already knew everyone there.

When I did my math course at UNSW, I was in classes with teachers, so I would have been with them, and it probably would have been a little bit easier to stay there, but I decided to... to take a chance and come out to UTS, and I think that was a really, really good decision.

Talking to principals, we've got a lot of teachers in my family and just family friends. There is a very high regard for teachers from UTS. The program that they have here, as Keith said before, is second to none.

The way that they put you into a classroom so early on is make or break, because there is nothing like being in a classroom. It is... can't teach that, you have to be there in order to see it. You will learn so much in those 10 day pracks, in those 30 day pracks, it'll be it'll be unbelievable for you.

So in terms of why I came to UTS, I had a lot of good recommendations from teachers that were already in the profession, saying that their UTS graduates were very well -prepared and very eager to take on the responsibility and that willingness in the classroom where some other students.

From other universities may not have been as willing or as prepared as a UTS student. The other thing that I found coming here is the assessments. Now, I don't think anyone particularly likes doing assignments or assessments, but the assignments and assessments that you conduct here at UTS are actually useful. A lot of those assessments that we did, we did in groups, which definitely emulates a faculty setting.

Teaching is not a profession that is done individually and it is not a profession done in atomization. So you need to be working with your faculty. You are with these people every day for 40 weeks a year and you need to get along with them. They will make your life significantly easier. So being in these groups at UTS from people with different perhaps teaching methods or different ages and different backgrounds was really, really helpful in emulating that involvement.

We developed a lot of lesson plans and teaching plans in those assessment tasks, and that is something that one of the teaching lessons that I did, we were doing the rock cycle, and we had time to actually sit down for a week and develop a lesson on the rock cycle, and I actually still use that lesson to this day, and it's actually a lesson that all my colleagues now use to this day. So all these assignments that you do as annoying as they may seem, here at UTS, they're actually very authentic and they're very realistic. So none of those assignments have I just sort of thrown in the bin. I've used everything that I've done here in every course.

I studied two teaching methods here at UTS. I did science and chemistry and then I also did mathematics. And UTS were very helpful in actually supporting me in order to do both there, which I found amazing. In my second year of study at UTS, I secured an internship at Sydney Catholic Schools, which meant I worked two days a week in the school, and then also had to do my study here.

I was very worried that that was going to be difficult and that I wouldn't be able to attend classes and it would just be a mess, but UTS was very supportive in allowing me in my second placement to actually conduct it at my internship school and allow me that flexibility of actually being able to do my internship but also being able to finish my graduate course. So I think overall here, the experience at UTS is definitely second to none and you come out very, very prepared with authentic tasks and things like that.

At the end of your second practicum, you do, I think, is it still called the AGAT, the assessment? Yeah, so you put together essentially a portfolio. As a teacher, according to Nessa, you need to fulfill seven steps, standards of teaching and you actually emulate that in your AGAT after your final practicum. So it's about the things you've done on the practicum, do you know the content and how to teach it? How did you engage with your colleagues and things like that?

On your journey as a teacher, you will move from provisional teaching to proficient teaching and that's when one of those, the biggest pay rise comes in. And it can be a very daunting process because you need to write a big portfolio, but what was actually great is I just took my UTS portfolio and I put it in the NESA bucket, and that worked quite well, so it actually gave me a standing point and a send-off point in order to actually do that really daunting portfolio for NESA. So as I said, assessment tasks are very authentic, and the university itself is very supportive.

The professional network that you build here is amazing. I'm still in contact. I'm actually marrying one of my colleagues that I met at UTS. (laughing) But that's-- - That's not promised. - No, no, that's, yes. (laughing) But a possibility. But those teaching networks that you develop here, we have teachers in lots of different sectors and in lots of different schools that I'm still in contact with and we still share resources. I still catch up with our old lecturers as well and you're not a number here you're a person you're a teacher you're a professional which I think is really really important so thank you for your time and I hope we can answer some of your questions as well thank you thank you Madeline um all right now I'm gonna do that old teacher trick and say I'm gonna give you some thinking time because it's it's it's time for some questions So remember what I said just put your hand up if you've got any questions, and we'll get a microphone to you and help you out You're too quick you're too quick it's still thinking time what I'm really doing is No, no, um and and please direct your question to however you think is best suited to answer it.

Yeah so Hi, I'm Dylan um my question is kind of sorry I'm not used to a mic I usually just shout my biggest question and probably the biggest thing that for me is a little bit intimidating kind of stepping into the classroom these days is for me when I was sort of in high school it was very much practical it was pen and paper that kind of stuff and obviously as time was going on You know technology is being integrated more and more into the classroom Just how are you guys? Maybe sort of directed towards you How are you guys finding sort of that's ability to adapt to a technology being integrated into the classroom over time like Do they even still use pen and paper like I just have no idea to sort of gauge where the classroom is at these days When I so I graduated in 2015 from high school and I thought when I entered back into the teaching profession It would be exactly the same as when I left it as a student And as you said it is actually very very different and I was very shocked because there's no physical textbooks anymore They don't have to carry around their math new century textbook or anything like that How much the kids use laptops is is up to you, but I know that part of the pedagogy here at UTS is to use a blended model because you do need to use their laptops.

There are phenomenal simulations that you can use and the laptops and technology are helpful, but you need to be doing that in a way that is supporting their learning and not them playing Tetris or talking on Google chats, which we get a lot of. A hint if you go out into the classroom, if their fingers are on the average arrows, they're not doing what you ask, they're playing Tetris.

So just a tip if you need that and you go out into the classroom. But there is definitely still pen and paper. I actually think there's now post COVID a move back towards writing because we've noticed that literacy and numeracy across all schools and Napoleon and all that has actually really dropped post COVID. So there is that move back to handwriting and that move back to writing.

Towards pen and paper and solidifying that knowledge. But students will have their laptops and that can be a challenge, particularly if you were at school and you didn't have laptops and now all of a sudden you're monitoring laptop use as you're going around. But there was a course here at UTS that we did about using technology meaningfully and not just using it for the sake of like everyone open up your laptops and we'll just do do a YouTube video or type up a doc.

So it is definitely different but as a teacher you decide how much you want to use laptops. So we have a policy at my school where you don't open your laptop until the teacher asks. So they don't sit down and open their laptops but we had to implement even a digital detox day because we found that that reliance was becoming a little bit too heavy. So it will it will ebb and flow but I definitely think these days we're sort of pushing back towards pen and paper a little bit.

Does that answer your question? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Just from a career transition perspective, if you're a full -time working professional and you're trying to do your masters of teaching with that, what does that probably look like? That's a really good question. Thank you. So, Madeline, do you want to answer that one? Did you work during your...

I did work, but I worked part -time. Tell us about that. So, like I said before, I secured the internship, so I was contracted to work two days a week at a particular school that I'm at now, but there were night classes as well that were available to us, and during 2020 we had online learning as well. So I was actually doing everything online, which I think it lost a bit of its touch, not being with everyone and not being in that group. But UTS I have found is very highly supportive.

In terms of your assessments and assignments and things like that, it really is just about managing time. I don't think that the course is overly demanding, but it will definitely be a game of time management and when you are able to actually complete the assessments and all that stuff. I think the question is more, I get it, like I actually studied at UTS 16 years ago and I did my master's at UTS and I got a job and 16 years from then now I've just walked into the building again so it's kind of coming back to the past.

So it's more about when the internships happen, when you do the school visits, the number of hours, the number of days. and the course requirements in that sense, how a working full -time professional is expected to, I mean, we take a day off, or we take a month off, just some questions around that. Thank you. - You would need to take a month off work to be able to do the third, and I think that's something that the government more widely is now looking at.

So some of you might be aware that the government is now looking at where there are compulsory compulsory internships as part of degrees as actually having payment for people who are having to do those internships as part of their degree so that could change in the near future. I'm not sure how near future so if you're looking at next semester it won't be but I mean in future there is that possibility because obviously you will have to have funds set aside to be able to do those professional experience placements as well.

that's something to be really realistic about Madeline school Obviously has the internship program actually if you have a look quite a lot of schools now especially in the independent sector, but there are also opportunities in the public system and the Catholic system to Engage in an internship at that is a well and when I say internship is separate from your professional experience placement That is your internship.

So I know for our school, for example, we have first, second, third and fourth year opportunities. So in your very first year you can be a teacher's aide or a teaching assistant and you're getting paid at a teaching assistant rate. I actually think it's invaluable. Madeleine is obviously an outstanding teacher who went on to get a job as a result of that internship at the school she was at. That's not uncommon.

So just in terms of looking for those opportunities. opportunities, and UTS will often advertise those opportunities to you so that you're aware of what's available. But if you've got a particular school that you're thinking, "Oh gosh, I'd love to work at that school," have a look on their website, see if they do have a teaching internship program, and so that will then give you an idea of what you might be able to do. It fits in really well with your studies that way, and the school will accommodate you. you when you do have that long unpaid internship as part of your degree. Did you want to add anything to that, Rick, or no?

After a year, all our pre -service teachers, all the students, find that they're transitioning out of the previous work that they were doing, because they're being made off... offers to get paid teaching work. And just to give you a really good example, and we didn't set this up, I promise, but up the back there's Anthony Caligieros. Anthony, please stand up. Anthony is a Master of Teaching student studying English and EALD, or just, no, English and Society in Culture? Just English, okay, the single specialisation. And he is now working three days a week or four days a week?

Four days a week, Anthony. he's still completing his studies. So just an example of exactly what Rick's saying, the transition into teaching. And it's going well. Sorry to single you out. Any other questions? I'm just conscious of the time. So what I might do if there's no more questions, I'm just going to ask our panellists for one final tip for people thinking about. studying teaching.

What would you say to them? Let's go with you, Kimberly.

My daughter has just started studying at another university, doing a primary education degree. She had a lot of teachers and other people try to dissuade her, which is actually really sad. I think we are part of a wonderful profession, and I'm so proud that she has decided to go into teaching. She had thought long and hard about it, but at the end of the day, being able to connect with young people through learning and growth is a unique opportunity to have an impact in someone else's life and make a difference.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much. I would have to say a similar thing to you as well, that the impact you make as a teacher is just phenomenal. And as I said before, there are days where you will struggle, there may be weeks that you struggle, but I think reaching out, even if it's reaching out while you're studying here to your lecturers at UTS, they've always been incredibly supportive. When times get rough or reaching out to your colleagues, they're always there for you. Like I said before, it's not a job that you can do in isolation. You need to have someone else that you can lean on. I know my poor mother has heard me talk and talk and talk about those particular students that like to irk you. But yeah, this is a social job and it is different every day and it is amazing every day too.

One of the big decisions to make if you're aspiring to be a teacher is what age group of children you want to work with—five to seven year olds, nine to ten year olds, 12 to 15 year olds, and so on. Now, I say that's to initially start, but we know that our graduates may have done a primary teaching degree, but some move on and become secondary school teachers. Likewise, there's movement back from those who are secondary school teachers to teach in primary school. You know, there is that flexibility. Can I just get a show of hands? How many would be interested in possibly doing primary teaching? And hands up for secondary. Thanks, Rick. Okay, just up there.

Please put your hands together to thank our panelists one last time. It's a QR code if you'd like to book a one-to-one consultation, maybe about the subject content knowledge requirements and those kinds of things, please make use of that. That brings us to the end of this session. I'd like to extend our gratitude to our guest speakers for sharing their insights and talking about the degrees that we offer here. But especially to you guys for coming and participating, both in person and online. We appreciate that as well and we hope to welcome you to UTS soon. For those interested in applying, which I'm sure is all of you, applications are now open for the August intake and you can submit your application via the UTS student portal. Commonwealth supported places are available. Make sure you stay around, talk to people, we'll all hang around and answer some questions, good opportunity to network. I'm just going to leave you with a thought. Now, I don't know how true this is, but somebody once told me that teachers are treated with immense respect in career. So much so that they are often called world builders because they build the world of the future by looking after the young people. And I think it's just a wonderful way to think about the work that we all do and you might be interested in doing. You know, you go out and you build worlds of the future. So thank you all for coming. Enjoy the rest of your day.