#27 The Silence Upgrade, Smell Revelation, Parkour Deficit and Drama Shift

After a three year “creative pause” (read: I blinked and forgot I had a blog), I’ve resurfaced. It’s been three years, more parent emails than my inbox deserved, several (thousand) existential coffees (and wines) and one major career plot twist since my last post.

After six years teaching in primary school, I traded textas and tantrums for algebra and attitude, and I’m now a Maths teacher in an all-girls Catholic high school.

The lip gloss is shinier, the opinions are louder and the algebra is definitely harder. But honestly? It’s the most chaotic, hilarious, unexpectedly perfect upgrade my teacher life could have asked for. Welcome back to the madness.

Teaching in an all-girls school has hit me with four plot twists I was wildly unprepared for: the Silence Upgrade, the Smell Revelation, the Parkour Deficit and the Drama Shift. These are things nobody warned me about before I embarked on this new career adventure. Let’s unpack them together.

1.      The Silence Upgrade

The first shock: girls can be quiet. Not “working quietly”. Not “quiet-ish”. Actual, atmosphere silence, like someone muted the entire cohort. They can switch it on instantly, and it’s both impressive and faintly unsettling.

The first time I taught in an all-girls Maths class, I honestly thought something had broken. It was quiet. Not the tense, “everyone is planning chaos” quiet, but peaceful, focused, “I can hear my own brain working” quiet. No chair-drumming. No spontaneous sound effects. No one practicing their beatboxing career mid-fractions. And absolutely nobody was snapping a protractor and announcing it like a breaking news alert. Every now and then I’d look up, expecting to catch someone climbing a bookshelf or attempting a desk-to-desk parkour sprint, but instead….just calm humans doing Maths. It felt suspicious at first, then magical, then dangerously addictive.

2.      The Smell Revelation

You don’t realise how much boys smell until you teach without them. Suddenly the classroom smells like stationery, luxury candles and lip gloss. The absence of that damp, unmistakable “just finished running around” smell is transformative.

One of the biggest perks of teaching in an all-girls school I have learnt, is the sudden disappearance of weaponised smells. No lunchboxes quietly fermenting. No mystery odours drifting through the room like a chemical warning. Even walking past the toilets doesn’t make you want to put a peg on your nose, which feels scientifically suspicious. And best of all, the random drive-by fart clouds that used to sweep through mixed classes like rogue weather fronts have vanished entirely. Instead, the air is…normal. Fresh. Occasionally even pleasant. My nostrils are living their best life. 

3.      The Parkour Deficit

Boys treat school architecture like a personal obstacle course. Girls do not. No climbing railings, no leaping over benches, no dangling from the door frames like caffeinated lemurs. Your daily “Get down from there, right now” and “You are not making a safe choice” quota drops to almost zero.

One of the most immediate differences I noticed in an all-girls Maths class is what I now call The Parkour Deficit. In mixed classes, there’s always at least one student (usually more) who treats the classroom like an obstacle course and the furniture like a personal challenge. You turn your back for two seconds and someone is balancing on a chair, attempting to leap between desks, demonstrating “just a quick trick” that absolutely violates the laws of physics and school policy. But in an all-girls room? Nothing. No climbing. No launching. No spontaneous acrobatics. The most dramatic movement I’ve seen is someone stretching slightly too far to reach a pastel highlighter. It’s like teaching in the same universe, but with the “random physical risk-taking” setting dialled down from a chaotic 10 to a polite 2. My adrenaline levels have never been so stable.

4.      The Drama Shift

There is still drama, of course (girls are drama queens after all!), but it’s a different genre. Less explosive, more intricate.

The biggest surprise in an all-girls classroom is the genre change in drama. In mixed classes, “drama” meant someone attempting a stunt, falling off something or turning a ruler into a projectile. Pure action movie chaos, that usually ended with me filling out an incident report while a student iced their head. This and a side of 12 year old relationship woes where Maths class seems like the perfect time to end a 3 day relationship or announce pre-teen cheating scandals. But in an all-girls room, the drama becomes bureaucratic mayhem: a calculator that wasn’t returned sparks a full investigation, a glue stick abandoned without its lid is treated like a crime scene, and homework submitted in a rogue font triggers tension. Alliances shift, eyebrows rise, eyes roll, someone whispers “Not Comic Sans”, and yet, miraculously, no one is climbing furniture. Honestly, I’ll take a stationery-based crisis over mid-lesson parkour any day.

So honestly......despite the Silence Upgrade, the Smell Revelation, the Parkour Deficit and the Drama Shift, I’m having the time of my life. Teaching in an all-girls school feels like stepping into a parallel universe where the air is breathable, the furniture stays on the ground and the drama comes with character development. It’s chaotic in a different way. A quieter, floral-scented, emotionally-layered chaos, and I love it. This is where I am meant to be.

And a huge part of that is the people I work with. I’m grateful for the special people who made my transition smooth, welcomed me warmly, accepted my quirks quickly and who now make every day feel shinier (and provide chocolate when the universe demands it). Thank you for your unwavering support and helping this awkward human who doesn't like change or new environments, feel so thankful for stepping out of my comfort zone and embracing a big life change.

So if this is the twist in my professional storyline, I’m fully on board. My new job is great. My students are brilliant. My coworkers are kind. And if the biggest challenge is decoding who’s not talking to whom and why, I’ll take that over prying a smelly Year 8 boy off a doorframe any day.

If you got this far, thank you for sticking around to read my latest career update. Here are a few photos to end, of things that have brought me joy.

After going from having a whole entire classroom to myself for 6 years, it has taken a bit of getting used to only having a desk in a staffroom but I am enjoying the smaller space to upkeep!

I never knew I needed this motivational avocado in my life. I've looked at it and smiled multiple times since it's new home on my desk, bringing me joy, encouragement, hope and motivation, much like the lovely colleague who gave it to me does.

Teach. Coffee. Repeat. 14.5 years on and my Blog name cannot be more accurate. I did miss having an on site coffee shop so that has been a perk of my change.

Communication with parents is far less in high school. This email meant the world to me and gave me the feedback I needed to know that the school context may be different, the impact on students is the same.

This is a weekly staff award that I was very grateful and surprised to receive. I always quietly go about doing the best job I can, and when it gets recognised I am very appreciative.

High school students still love hands on Maths, especially when chocolate is involved!