Thank you for your work in 2023

Dear colleagues

This marks the final edition of In Our Classrooms, both for 2023 and beyond.

I hope you have found it a useful, entertaining and even on occasion inspiring resource.

In this article, In Our Classrooms wraps up we explain how you can continue to access previous In Our Classroom articles on our website.

This change reflects our ongoing commitment to focus our resources on providing teachers in government schools in Victoria with the supports and resources they find most useful.

To that end, from Term 3 in 2024, we intend to publish the first of a series of lesson plans that are designed to both reduce teacher workload and reflect best current teaching and learning practice.

I look forward to being able to share more detail about these closer to the release date.

For now, it is important for me to say thank you for the work every teacher in Victorian government schools has done this year.

While we are now beginning to see progress in our efforts to address the teacher workforce pressures, it has nevertheless been a challenging year for many schools.

And yet every day in the vast majority of schools, students have had great learning experiences and been well supported in their mental health and wellbeing.

Their imaginations have been broadened, their curiosity evoked, their discipline knowledge deepened and, perhaps most importantly, they have learned more about how to learn.

They’ve also learned more about how to get on with others, how to regulate their behaviour and emotional responses and about the current issues in the communities and world around them.

And all this has happened not by luck or good fortune, but only because of the consistent hard work of every teacher in the state.

Thank you for all that work – the consistent application of classroom management practices, the team meetings to develop teaching and learning programs, the work with parents and carers and the organisation of camps, excursions and the myriad other out-of-school experiences that are so enriching for students.

I trust that the reduction this year of face-to-face teaching time by 60 minutes and a further 30 minutes in 2024 has and will provide further support for you in all of these endeavours.

I hope that the coming summer break is a time of refreshment, renewal and rejuvenation.

To those whose teaching career comes to an end through retirement with the conclusion of this school year, thank you. There are thousands of students and families who are indebted to you.

To those returning in 2024, I look forward to working with you again in the new year.

Thank you.

David Howes
Deputy Secretary
Schools and Regional Services