What I'd Tell a New Teacher: Wisdom from a LinkedIn Thread

A simple question on LinkedIn recently sparked something special: “What's one piece of advice you'd give a pre-service teacher who is now eligible to teach?”

What followed wasn't a list of tips people had read in a book. It was a thread full of educators, some decades into their careers, some coaches, some school leaders, reaching back through their own experience to offer something honest to the next generation. Reading through the replies, a handful of themes surfaced, from people who had clearly lived them. Here's what they had to say.

Build Your Professional Learning Network - Early and Deliberately 
The original post set the tone as I kicked off the conversation: build your PLN, your Professional Learning Network, within and beyond your university, your school, and even your country. Investment equals value, and I am grateful for exactly that kind of network.

A few commenters gently pushed back on the idea that early career teachers should take any job they can get. Instead, look for a school that genuinely values professional practice, mentoring, and professional standards. The goal isn't just employment; it's learning your craft from teachers and leaders who have real expertise in developing that craft in others.

It wasn't a throwaway line. A PLN isn't an abstract concept; it's actual relationships with actual people you can call on, often stretching well beyond the walls of any one school. I extended the idea into something almost architectural: know your “six degrees of separation.” Every teacher you meet knows another teacher, who knows another, and those connections built over coaching sessions, conferences, shared coursework, social media, quietly become the scaffolding of a career. I shared that sometimes, all it takes is one person who believes in your potential to redirect the entire trajectory of your work.

Treat the First Years as a Journey, Not a Test
Maybe the most reassuring thread running through the comments was this: your first years aren't a performance test. They're a learning journey. Reflect often. Seek feedback. Adapt without shame. Great teachers, several people noted, aren't born fully formed, they're built through continuous iteration.

This idea showed up again in a line that's worth pinning above any new teacher's desk: don't spend your first years trying to prove you're a teacher - spend them becoming one. “Act from Clarity: not proving yourself but improving yourself.” You're not expected to arrive as a finished product. You're expected to keep growing, and that's the job, not a failure to meet some invisible bar.

Choose Your School as Carefully as It Chooses You
Tied closely to this was the recurring call to find a mentor and then ask that mentor which teachers are worth observing. I was curious - do early-career teachers need to actively seek out a mentor, does the school provide one, and how do you even know if a mentor is effective? It's a fair question.

Relationships Are the Curriculum Beneath the Curriculum
If there was a single word that recurred more than any other, it was relationships. One commenter distilled it into “the 3 Rs: relationships, relationships, relationships” - always remembering the person behind the student, facilitating learning rather than simply “teaching,” and investing time in the craft because it pays dividends later.

As one commenter put it, kids won't remember whether every lesson was perfect; they'll remember how you made them feel, whether you believed in them, and whether your classroom felt like somewhere they belonged. I linked this comment directly to Maya Angelou's famous line about people forgetting what you said and did, but never how you made them feel. It's a cliché because it's true, and this thread made it feel true again.

Take Care of Yourself; You Are the Resource
Amid all the talk of craft and connection, there was a firm, practical warning: teaching will drain you if you don't put boundaries in place. You are an essential resource, and turning your attention toward the human beings in your life, not the flashy distractions, matters as much professionally as personally.

One reply reframed self-care not as an act of selfishness but as basic maintenance: it's okay to switch off. It's okay not to turn metaphorical cartwheels in every single lesson. Being kind to yourself was named explicitly as part of being a good teacher, not a departure from it. I offered the metaphor that came from my own mentor: teaching is a vortex. Advice easy to hear, harder to believe, until you're a few years in and it clicks.

Focus on What You Can Control
A particularly clarifying piece of advice came in the form of a short mantra: "control the controllables". You can't control every student, parent, policy, or curveball. But you can control your preparation, your mindset, the relationships you build, and how you show up each day. I tied this back to a specific piece of pop culture wisdom invoking “Let It Go” from Frozen as a genuine coping mechanism for the things outside a teacher's control. It's a small, funny detail, but it points at something real: sustainable teaching means knowing the difference between what's yours to fix and what isn't.

Don't Reinvent the Wheel  
Several experienced educators gently pushed back against the instinct many new teachers have to build everything from scratch. Borrow. Adapt. Learn from those who've done this work before you. I summed up this comment by simply stating that teachers should recognise that we stand on the shoulders of giants.

This connects to a broader point about not doing the job alone. It might be your class and your students, but good teachers lean on their teams, and great teams pool their strengths to meet the needs of every learner. No one, not even the most naturally gifted teacher is meant to carry this work solo.

Stay a Learner Yourself
Being “eligible to teach” is a starting line, not a finish line. Several commenters emphasized that the education journey has to continue. Always be willing to learn more, adapt as you learn more, and hold onto what I called “confident humility.” (Recommendation: Read Adam Grant: Think Again)

This extended into a broader philosophical note: teachers are in a formative phase of “becoming.” Who you are as a teacher is dynamic, not fixed, but your “why” should stay steady underneath it. Spend real time examining and understanding your purpose. Talk, read, and think your way into meaning. And never underestimate the simple power of kindness and smiling at your students.

Find Your “experienced” and Find the Marigolds 

One especially memorable piece of advice, offered almost in passing, was this: find your experienced; find the veteran educators around you and let them shape you. Someone followed it up sharing about Marigold and I shared Jennifer Gonzalez's well-known piece on “Marigolds”. The idea that some colleagues help you grow and thrive, while others quietly stunt you, and that new teachers should actively seek out the marigolds in their building.

See as Many Great Teachers as You Can

The thread closed on a simple, almost old-fashioned piece of advice: see as many amazing teachers in practice as you can. I commented on the “Pineapple Chart”: a system some schools use to let teachers signal when their classroom is open for others to drop in and observe, and reflected on the privilege of being the coach who connected effective practitioners across a school. Watching great teaching in action, it turns out, may still be one of the most underrated forms of professional development available.

The Thread's Real Advice

Strip away the specifics, and this LinkedIn thread was really saying one thing in a dozen different voices: teaching is not something you arrive at; it's something you keep becoming, with other people's help. Build your network. Find your mentors. Take care of yourself. Focus on what's yours to control. And remember that long after your students forget the lesson plans, they'll remember how you made them feel.

For anyone eligible to teach and wondering where to start, I hope the advice shared by my professional learning network provides a helpful starting point.

Always curious,

Andrea

"Know the Source Before You Cite It"

A citation is a shortcut for trust. It says I didn't make this up, someone researched it, here's who and where. That shortcut only works if you've actually read what you're pointing to. 

Knowing the source means more than the reference itself. It means knowing what question the authors set out to answer, what evidence the claims were built on, and whether they ever went back and revised their own work later.

Most people skip that last part. It means reading past the one sentence that supports your point, to the sentences right after it that complicate it. A claim that leadership matters usually comes with a caveat that the effect is moderate and indirect. Often, nobody quotes the caveat.

 

Cherry-picking isn't always dishonest on purpose. Sometimes it's just easier. Read the abstract, pull the line that fits, move on. I get it, reading a whole paper takes time and most people don't have it, or think they don't. But the whole value of citing research is borrowing its rigour, and rigour doesn't transfer through one sentence. It transfers through the whole argument, caveats included.

 

Before you cite something, ask yourself honestly: have I read this, or have I read a version of this that already agrees with me? If it's the second one, the research isn't backing your position. You're backing it into a role it was never built for.

Reading the whole paper is the minimum, and anyone can do it. But when I question a citation, I reach out the author. Many in educational research are generous and happy to answer any questions about their research. 

Thank you to those who continue to keep me connected with educational research.

Three Events. One Question.

Last week was one of those weeks that reminded me why I do what I do. Three very different professional learning experiences. Three very different communities of people. And one question that kept surfacing for me: are we doing enough to ensure that professional learning actually meets people where they are? As a coach, I think about this all the time. Coaching, at its heart, is about meeting the individual where they're at. That is, understanding their context, their starting point, their goals, and designing a learning journey that serves them. Professional learning, when it's done well, should do exactly the same thing. Last week offered no shortage of ideas, questions, and observations to reflect upon.

When One Person Speaks to Many Worlds

The week began at school, where our Principal, Chris Bradbury and Prof Phil Cummins had organised professional learning across several different communities- our student school leaders, our leadership team, an ACT Teachers' Guild event that brought together staff and educators from across the ACT, and a masterclass for our parents and carers. Each group was distinct. Each brought different experiences, different questions, different needs.

It was so interesting to watch Phil navigate each audience across different sessions. Phil and I have known each other and each other's work for years. That matters more than we sometimes acknowledge. He was able to draw the through-line between professional learning and coaching in a way that resonated deeply for me, because he understood the lens I bring to this work. When someone already knows you, your thinking, your values, your professional history, the conversation starts somewhere different. That's the power of relationship in professional learning, and it's something no program or platform can replicate.
 
It's also what I kept returning to across the whole week: the moments that mattered most were the ones built on connection. Reconnecting with educators I hadn't seen in years. Conversations that picked up where they left off. The particular ease that comes when someone already knows your work, and you know theirs. That kind of knowing is what coaching is built on, and it's what the best professional learning is built on too.

EduTECH Sydney: Big Energy, Little Space to Think

EduTECH was a different experience entirely. Huge. Energetic. I've known Andy Hargreaves for years and always enjoy his presentations, so it was great to catch his keynote and then fall into one of our long conversations afterwards about the things keeping leaders, teachers and academics up at night: the current climate in schools, the teacher shortage crisis, and the complicated role that tech and social media are playing in it all.                    

The workshops were embedded within the commercial exhibition space, which created a kind of noise, literal and metaphorical, that was hard to escape. Some sessions had you wearing headphones just to hear the presenter, which meant losing those small spontaneous moments of turning to the person beside you to share a thought. Others relied on microphones and good listening skills, both of which were tested against the constant ambient hum of a busy conference floor. People moved constantly around you, not necessarily in search of learning, but for products, connections, the next shiny thing. It was at times overwhelming, and yet that's the nature of an event this size. The value is still there, just buried a little deeper. You have to go looking for it, usually in the quieter corners, in the unplanned conversations that end up staying with you long after you've forgotten the slide decks. 

What I noticed most was what was missing: silence. Space to think. A quiet corner to process what you'd just heard. I tried to have informal conversations with people during sessions, but we had to physically remove ourselves from the space to do it. Randomly meeting up in different parts of the world, Dr John Cleary is one of the most generous people I've had the privilege of learning from. He freely gives his time and knowledge in a way that stays with you and his way of being is inspiring. I feel lucky to have crossed paths year ago and valued our informal chat in a quieter space. The opportunity to debrief, discuss, or ask the what ifs or share your wonderings was limited, yet, the message was clear. AI is here, and the sessions that cut through the noise did so because they asked the right questions.

 

Laura Bain asked, What if we designed schools today? Her presentation reminded me of Sir Ken Robinson and do you remember, “Most Likely to Succeed” (Wagner & Dintersmith) and “What School Could Be” (Dintersmith). The big questions haven't changed. We just keep finding new reasons to avoid answering them.

 

The conversation around AI in education has been dominated by fear. Fear that students are cheating, that assessment is broken, that we've lost control of what we can measure. But that's the wrong starting point. Used thoughtfully, AI has the potential to personalise learning, provide meaningful feedback, and free teachers and administrators to do the human work that no algorithm can replace. 

That brought me to a question I haven't been able to shake: who is going to help teachers learn about AI and how it is influencing teaching and learning that is sometimes reflected in assessment. I thought about ISTE in 2013 and 2015, where I met technology coaches who were embedded in classrooms. Those who are skilled, knowledgeable educators whose job was to work alongside teachers to integrate technology meaningfully. Do we need that model again, but for AI?

Leaving EduTECH, I was struck by how quickly AI is evolving and much there is to learn. However, we all need space that learning deserves. Teachers can't do it alone, and sessions at a conference will never be enough. We need to think carefully about how we enable that learning, and about who we trust to lead it. 

 

The EA Conference: A Reminder That PL Is For Everyone

The third experience was a mini conference for Executive Assistants orchestrated by Kristine Niven. I joined because I wanted to support this event and hear my previous principal, Dr Briony Scott, present. But I also joined because, as Director of Professional Practice, I genuinely believe that professional learning is not just for teachers but for all staff who support the education within the school community.

It's a message that still needs to be said, loudly and often: every person in a school community deserves access to meaningful professional growth. EAs do extraordinary work. It's complex, relational, demanding, and yet they are often the last to be included in professional learning conversations. Watching that room come alive, watching people feel seen and valued in their professional roles, was a powerful reminder of the importance of inclusion and acknowledgement.

So Where Does This Leave Me?

Three experiences. Three very different communities. And the same thread running through all of them: professional learning needs to evolve to truly serve the individual.
 
As a coach, I know that the most powerful growth happens when someone feels known, when the learning is relevant to their actual work, and when there is space. The space has to be genuine and protected, to reflect, to question, to make meaning. We don't always build that into our school day or professional learning programs. We build content, we build schedules, we build programs. But do we build in the conditions that actually make learning stick? 
 
EduTECH showed me what happens when those conditions are missing...when there is noise but no silence, content but no conversation, presentations but no processing. The learning gets crowded out.
 
The EA conference showed me what happens when a group of people who are at times overlooked are given their own space to learn and connect. They thrive.
 
And the school-embedded PL reminded me that when you know your people, when the facilitator understands the room and the room trusts the facilitator, real things happen.
 
Professional learning is changing. It has to. The world our teachers are navigating brings rapid change and increasing complexity. This world demands something more responsive, more personalised, more human centred. I'm still sitting with the question of what that looks like in practice for a Pre-K through to Year 12 school that consists of teaching and non-teaching staff. But I know it starts with this: treat every learner as an individual with something to bring and something to grow into. Offer as much opportunity and experiences, and learn from other schools globally.

What does professional learning look like in your context? And who in your school community might be missing out on it?

Presenters and People I Connected With at EduTECH

Part of what makes a conference worthwhile is the people. Here are some of the sessions I attended and the educators I was lucky enough to learn from.
 

Sessions

•      MC Annabel Astbury (met at ISTE, USA in 2015, and she greeted me with, "Your boss is married to my boss!")
•      Aunty Julie Jones: Welcome to Country and Performance
•      Dr Andy Hargreaves: Teaching to repair the world: How to retain AND sustain a strong teaching profession
•      Dr Jason Reynolds: Literacy as liberation: Reimagining engagement for the TikTok generation
•      Matt Esterman, Anna Sever, Paul Tame: AI in the classroom: Supporting teaching and learning in practice
•      Dr Nick Jackson: AI ethics that doesn't bore learners to death
•      Dr Sarah McKay: Neuromyth to neuroscience: How to talk about the teenage brain
•      Julian Ridden, Adam Biggs, Peta Hicks: Smarter work, better outcomes: Using technology in education
•      Dr Andrew Fuller: Converting neurodiversity into neuro-advantage
•      Laura Bain: What if we designed schools today?
•      Dr John Cleary, Jenny Hanson, Dr Dan Edwards, Dr Theo Clark and Scott O'Hara: Assessment reimagined: Charting the future for learners

Friends and Colleagues

Educators I was lucky enough to reconnect with through a simple smile, hello or hug: Carolyn Morrison, Briony Scott, Terrie Jones, Adam Voigt, Brenda Quayle, Bron Stuckey, Andy Draper, Sarah Warby, Hugh Gundlach, and the Radford IT Team. These are the connections that remind you the education community is small, generous, and worth showing up for.

Staying Curious,

Andrea