By Danielle Kutchel
Teaching excellence is all in a day’s work for Hillsmeade Primary School teacher Jess Szalek.
Now in her fifth year of teaching, Ms Szalek focuses on making learning authentic and likeable for her students.
In her maths classes for example, she keeps students engaged through song, creating catchy ditties to capture those often-tricky numeracy concepts.
Kids are often involved in writing and producing the songs too, which are then recorded and put on the school’s intranet to be broadcast across the school.
The songs are often parodies of popular tunes, and Ms Szalek says her students are now associating their favourite radio hits with maths.
“I still remember my times tables from school and I remember learning them through songs in class,” she says.
“That worked for me as a learner, so I try to bring it into the classroom. It doesn’t work for everyone, but we want to cater for every students and music is another way we can cater to certain styles of learning.”
Acknowledging that some students learn through bookwork, some through tunes and some through hands-on physical learning, another of Ms Szalek’s ideas is to take her students outside to study angles by applying the lessons to goal kicking in a game of AFL – keeping it authentic to what her students like.
Now, her efforts to make learning accessible to every student have earned her a national teaching award.
Ms Szalek was honoured with the $2000 Excellence Award at the recent Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute Choose Maths Awards.
“It’s pretty surreal, it speaks volumes about our school and the way we go about things,” she says of the award.
“It’s very prestigious and humbling, but I’m just trying to do what every teacher does.”
She added that she attributes her success to her mentor and principal, Jodie Bray, who has supported her teaching journey.
“I try and live and breathe her mantra: good teaching and learning is good teaching and learning,” Ms Szalek says.
She says the award has reaffirmed the direction her teaching is going in.
“I would love to use it to reach other staff and other networks and use it as a stepping stone to develop more consistency across our network and area and even Victoria.
“I would like to make sure we can build collective efficacy in numeracy improvement in all students – the more improvement in student outcomes, the better. The students are the main reason why we all do this and if I’ve got something that works well, I want to share with other teachers and maybe reach a few extra learners,” the award winner says.
