Tell Them From Me Survey Update – Staff Survey
Seventeen teachers completed this survey, and results were reflective of the eight drivers of student learning. The school mean was higher than the region mean in the areas of leadership, collaboration, and parent involvement. The school mean was equivalent to the region mean in areas of learning culture, data informing practice, teaching strategies, and inclusive schooling. Our mean was slightly lower than the region mean in the area of technology. 

We discovered that our teachers work with school leaders to create a safe and orderly school environment. Teachers feel that the leadership team assists them to improve teaching practice and to establish challenging and visible learning goals for students. Our staff indicated that school leaders are supportive of them during stressful times. Areas we will continue to improve, and which are part of our Annual Improvement Plan, include teacher observation and more formalised feedback about teaching practice. 

Teachers at St Matthew’s regularly talk with other teachers about strategies that increase student engagement. They participate in professional discussions about issues of inclusion, and work with other teachers in developing cross-curricular and common learning opportunities. The progress of their students is regularly monitored, and high expectations are set for student learning.  We use results from a range of assessment tasks to inform lesson planning.

Teachers indicated that they work with parents to help solve problems interfering with their child's progress, and that they are in regular contact with the parents of students with special learning needs.

Changes and initiatives implemented in the last two years that our teaching staff believe have made a positive difference include: 

• The Bounce Back program
• Professional development: The Writing Revolution, High Impact Teaching Practices, Catalyst initiatives
• Daily 5 literacy practices
• Inquiry
• Development of our school-based diagnostic assessment schedule and data repository

Parenting Ideas Webinars at No Cost
Our school has special access to vouchers that can be redeemed for parenting webinars through Parenting Ideas. We would like to share the following vouchers and codes with our parent community for two webinar recordings that may be of interest:

Helping Your Child with Anxiety: Voucher Code - HOPE

Encouraging Good Behaviour: Voucher Code - ENCOURAGE

The voucher code can be used by you in the Parenting Ideas online shop, where the webinars are sold. Using the voucher code will reduce the webinar cost from $30 to $0 at the checkout.