Students don’t want to be your friend, they want to know where they stand

In 1972, I walked into a classroom for the very first time as a teacher. I was doing a Dip Ed at Newcastle University and had been given my first prac at Raymond Terrace High School, about 25km north of Newcastle. I’ll never forget it. The English teacher who was supervising me opened the door to the staff room, pointed down the corridor and said, “Third door on the left. Off you go.” Apparently, I was going to learn “on the job”. I was left in no doubt that I was expected to work it all out myself.

This was my first teaching lesson. If someone else has to help you control a class, it’s no help at all. You have to work out a way of doing it on your own. I walked into that classroom to be confronted by a sea of faces, each one of them waiting to test me. They knew I was a student teacher and didn’t have much authority in the same way kids know a “sub” doesn’t have it. Many “subs” metaphorically throw their hands up in the air and let the class do what it likes. Which, these days, means going on their phones. Back then, it was climbing out the windows.

Teachers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are strict, others easy-going. Some yell, others are calm and controlled. Some want to be popular; others couldn’t care less. There are grumpy teachers, cheerful teachers, vague teachers, sharp teachers, ambitious teachers and teachers who teach without the slightest interest in climbing the corporate ladder. I don’t know whether good teachers are born or made, but I do know that not many will stay in the profession if they’re not passionate about what they teach or about enriching the lives of their students.

My first full-time posting, six weeks into the 1973 school year, was to Tenterfield High School, the smallest high school in New South Wales, about 16km from the Queensland border. I’d been transferred from Gunnedah. Back then, Tenterfield had a population of 3,000, four pubs and two registered clubs. Not dissimilar to the fictional town of Bundanyabba (Yabba) in Wake in Fright, it was different to anything I’d ever experienced. The photo on the wall of The Royal Hotel of a horse being given a drink in the front bar was a hint of things to come.

Even though I came from the country, I’d never lived in a country town. I was to learn very quickly that everyone knew each other – and their business. If they didn’t know it, they’d make it up. And I discovered that teachers weren’t held in particularly high regard.

My first class, 2E3 (Year 8), boasted that they’d already got rid of three teachers and would get rid of me, too. They treated me like the wet-behind-the-ears innocent that I was. I had no control over them. Fortunately, the maths master, Doug Chick, who was about 30, bearded and given to wearing bright red flares and colourful paisley shirts, heard the riot raging inside my weatherboard classroom one morning and came to my rescue.

Afterwards, he told me no matter how far the horse had bolted to never let go of the reins: running out of the room wasn’t an option. Despite the fact that my subject was English and his maths, he’d see me in the corridor and ask, “How are you going?” and it meant *everything* to me. I survived because of him.

I learned that in order to control an unruly class, you had to keep your students busy. As a result, I spent most nights at school preparing – to the last millisecond - the next day’s lessons. Above all, I endeavoured to make them *relatable*. We studied Don McClean’s American Pie instead of Wordsworth. Without abandoning spelling and grammar, I encouraged my students who weren’t great at grammar and spelling to put their energies into expressing themselves. I stopped covering their essays in red ink and, instead, praised them for their ideas. When they started to gain confidence, I gently suggested some spelling and grammar corrections.

I learned that discipline requires consistency. A class respects a request if everyone has to do the same thing. Students don’t understand why certain people are allowed to get away with inappropriate behaviour while they get into trouble for a minor indiscretion.

One of my colleagues in the English department, a veteran teacher with years of experience, opened my eyes to what made a good teacher. Helen Hartmann was way too preoccupied with guiding her charges to academic glory to take any notice of the “gobbling” sounds that followed her as she strode across the playground. Helen’s annual treat to herself was to travel to Sydney to sit on the Hill for five days at the Sydney Test. She was her own woman. What she didn’t know about Jane Austen wasn’t worth knowing. Her passion for literature was inspiring. The juniors may have given her a hard time, but the seniors adored her and many went on to great things after being taught by her.

 I grew to love the Librarian, a woman who might have been small in stature but was a colossus in her domain. Joyce Morris had a hairstyle that brought to mind a Viking helmet and a tough-as-nails exterior that belied her deeply compassionate nature. Once, I rolled up to the library with my class without having made a booking. She tore strips off me in front of the kids and sent me off with my tail between my legs. At the end of the lesson, I raced up the stairs to the library and apologised. It was the beginning of a friendship that lasted many years after I had left Tenterfield. She came along to a staged reading of David Williamson’s The Removalists and didn’t bat an eyelid either at the fruity language or the sight of two kids, dressed as coppers, bashing me up.

Nowadays, experienced teachers are too weighed down by paperwork to help their younger colleagues. These newcomers are every bit as keen as I was, but they just don’t get the same support I benefited from. There are thousands of retired teachers who’d make wonderful mentors: why don’t we make the investment of re-employing them? It might just stem the tide of teachers who are leaving the profession.

Coaching the school football team at Tenterfield was also a game-changer. I’d pack the ones who lived out of town into my VW and drive them home after training because it was the only way they could get home. We talked and I got to know them as people. And they got to know me.

Teaching them how to tackle, I threw myself into the fray. I tackled the star of the team and he tackled me. That won me respect as well as bruises. Nowadays, the dreaded Risk Assessment Form would make such close engagement impossible, just as, many years later, it would prevent me from transporting my cricket team at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts to games in my Kombi.

At Tenterfield, I learned that my students lived very different lives to mine. I discovered that one fourteen year – let’s call her Zara - got up early, washed and clothed her younger siblings, fed them, packed their lunches and walked them to school – all before 8am when she had to get herself to school, a journey of 16km. I finally understood why she, and her partners in crime, sat up the front testing me out. School was “down time “for Zara. She was there to relax before afternoon duties. And relax she did. She had a laugh that would wake the dead and it rang out through the classroom (and the school) at regular  intervals. I was barely in control of Zara’s 3E2 class.

The more time I spent in the classroom, the more I dropped the teacher façade and became . . . myself. I discarded my conservative Pelaco shirt for a mauve body shirt and wide purple tie. Purple flairs replaced by beige slacks. I learned that kids see right through you if you pretend to be something you’re not.

Years later, I stopped being a senior examiner for HSC drama when it was decided we should dress like “professionals” and wear suits and ties or modest dresses and blouses. I felt more like a detective than the encouraging, supportive teacher I wanted to be.

Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops in those early days. One day, driving home after school, I waved at a group of students who were hanging out at the milk bar. One of them immediately flipped me the “bird”. I was shattered. I went home and climbed into bed. There were many, *many* times during my first year of teaching, in particular, that I felt like a complete loser.

Because Tenterfield High was such a small school and a good percentage of the equally small staff had been there for years, there were opportunities available to a young teacher like me that wouldn’t have been in a bigger school. I played water polo and basket ball with the kids, was cast as Pharoah in a school production of Joseph and His Technicolour Dreamcoat and became the union rep because, well, I was the only one to put up my hand.

Consequently, I experienced the impact the union had on the profession directly - by reducing class sizes, for example. I came to appreciate that it wanted to improve conditions for teachers and students alike: we weren’t the “commos” the media liked to portray us as. At a rally many years later, I remember being struck by the number of middle-aged women marching for better conditions for teachers. They were dedicated, not radical.

I gained some self-respect because I was trusted. I was given positions of responsibility. I learned to treat my students as human beings, not to talk down to them or try to curry favour by using nick names in a misguided effort to be the “popular teacher”. I learned that students don’t want to be your friend: they want to know where they stand.

And I learned to be patient. Today, I still encourage all my drama students to sit in a circle. I do this so everyone can hear and see everyone else. They pretend they hate it, especially Year 12, but I wait until everyone is in a circle before I begin the lesson. I’ve learnt to be patient. If it takes 10 minutes, it takes 10 minutes. It’s always worth it in the end.

I’m still teaching - for the simple reason that I love it. I love seeing the smiles on students’ faces in the corridors as they rush past me. And I love the trust they place in me which I hope I deserve. It’s a wonderful profession and I’ve loved nearly every moment of my 50 years as a teacher.