What Good Teaching Really Looks Like – Jennifer Oaten
This week I had the chance to step back into the classroom and take a couple of lessons. It has been a while, and I had forgotten how much I love it.
There is something about standing at the front of a room full of young women, adjusting your approach on the spot, making a hundred small decisions in the space of a single lesson, that gets under your skin in the best possible way. Teaching is hard. It is also one of the most rewarding careers and being back in the classroom reminded me why I have such deep admiration for the people who do it every day.
The questions parents ask me that I find most interesting are rarely about results. They are about what is actually happening in the classroom. How does her teacher know if she really understands something, rather than just getting the right answer? What happens when she genuinely struggles?
These are the right questions. And they are shaping much of what our teaching staff are focusing on this year.
Teaching Is Something You Keep Getting Better At
Great teaching is not a fixed destination. It is something you work at, reflect on, and refine throughout your career. The best teachers are the ones who are still genuinely curious about their own practice, regardless of how long they have been in the classroom.
This year, we are making that commitment more structured and collaborative across the College.
One of the ways we support our experienced teachers to keep growing is through our own EXCEL program. It involves setting personal teaching goals, having lessons observed by a colleague, gathering feedback from students, and sitting honestly with what the evidence is telling them. It is not a compliance exercise. It is genuinely about each teacher asking: what am I doing well, and what could I do better for the students in front of me?
Good teaching has always involved caring about the students in front of you. What has changed is our understanding of how much a student’s wellbeing shapes her capacity to learn, and how important it is for teachers to hold both things at once.
Alongside EXCEL, our teachers are also taking part in the High Impact Practices program, known as HIPs, delivered through our partnership with the Association of Independent Schools of Western Australia. HIPs is built around teaching strategies that research has consistently shown to make a meaningful difference to how students learn. Things like being very clear about what a lesson is aiming for, giving feedback that moves a student forward, and structuring learning so that new knowledge connects to what students already understand. These are not new or complicated ideas, but doing them well and consistently is a genuine craft.
What sets HIPs apart is that they do not simply send teachers to a workshop and hope something sticks. It involves sessions built around three key areas: understanding what high impact teaching looks like in practice, designing learning with real intention, and building a genuine culture of learning across the College. Teachers work alongside each other, with one-to-one coaching and classroom observations, to look honestly at their practice and make practical changes together. In fact, as this blog goes out, our staff are gathered for exactly that kind of day.
Our teachers are setting goals to ensure the highest quality classroom experiences. This is focused on goals based on parts of a lesson, which include Starting Smart, Maximising the Middle or Finishing Strong.
All of this work is building towards something meaningful. Over time, it will shape a Santa Maria Instructional Model, a shared understanding across the College of what excellent teaching looks like in practice, so that every student experiences consistently high-quality learning, regardless of which classroom she is in.
When teachers are genuinely learning, students feel it.
The World Our Students Are Growing Into
I have written before about the research on attention spans, and what the constant pull of digital technology is doing to young people’s capacity for deep, sustained thinking. It concerns me, and I know it also concerns many educators and parents.
The skills our daughters will need most, critical thinking, curiosity, collaboration, resilience, and the ability to sit with a complex problem, are precisely the skills that require that deeper kind of focus. You may recognise some of these if your daughter is in Years 5 to 10 and involved in our emPOWER programs, where students work through real, complex challenges that have no simple answer. That kind of learning does not come from surface-level content coverage. It needs teaching that is thoughtful and well-designed.
The ability to focus deeply is not just an academic skill. It is increasingly a wellbeing one too.
That is the connection between what is happening in the world and what we are asking of our teachers.
Using Technology With Care
We have also appointed a Head of Digital Innovation and AI this year, and I think it is worth being clear about what that means in practice.
It is not about bringing more technology into every lesson. If anything, it is about helping our teachers ask important questions: Does this tool actually help my students learn more effectively, or does it just make the lesson look different? That is a harder question than it sounds, and it matters enormously right now.
What You Might Start to Notice
Some of these changes may start to show up in small ways.
Feedback may feel different. We are working with teachers to make it more specific and more targeted, so that your daughter knows not just how she did, but what to focus on next. If she can tell you what she is working to improve, that is a good sign that the feedback is landing.
You may also notice her talking about learning differently. When students understand how their brain works and why they are doing something, they feel some ownership over how they demonstrate their understanding, and then something shifts. They ask better questions. They are a little more willing to sit with difficulty before looking for an easy answer.
The Conversation at Home Matters More Than You Might Think
There is a piece of research worth sharing here. Evidence for Learning found that home-based engagement, parents setting high expectations, talking about school, and fostering a positive attitude towards learning, add up to approximately four months of additional academic progress per year.
Four months. Not from extra tutoring or additional classes, but from the quality of conversations happening at home.
So rather than “how was school today,” you might try something more specific.
- What are you working to get better at right now?
- What has your teacher said about your next steps?
- What did you find hard this week, and what did you do about it?
Those conversations are where so much of the real learning happens.
Our teachers are doing something that takes genuine courage, looking honestly at their own practice and asking whether there are ways to make their teaching and learning even better. It is, in many ways, exactly what we ask of our students every day.
And perhaps that is what good teaching really looks like. Not a fixed standard to reach, but a commitment to ongoing renewal and improvement so the student in front of you achieves the best possible learning outcomes each and every day.
- Catholic girls’ school WA, Featured, Girls' Education Perth, Good teaching, High Impact Teaching Practices, Instructional model, Mercy Education, Santa Maria College Perth, Student wellbeing and learning, Teaching excellence
Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.
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