Why I'm marching tomorrow
Fifty years ago, I walked into a classroom as a Practice Teacher (prac teacher) for the first time. The school was Raymond Terrace High and I’ll never forget the mixture of exhilaration and fear that I felt as I entered the room.
It was the beginning of a love affair with teaching that has never been extinguished no matter how many challenging moments (and there have been many) I have faced.
The current crisis that teachers face across the country is not the first one I’ve been involved in. Nor will it be the last, but it may well be the most existential of crises.
I was Fed Rep at Tenterfield High at the ripe old age of 22. I won the election because no one else stood. The issues we fought over and won, transformed teaching. When I started out it was not uncommon to have 35-40 students in a class. Even 45, in some schools. Not even the most rabid “expert” would argue that class sizes of that number facilitated ideal learning conditions.
There is one issue that hasn’t been resolved successfully no matter how many campaigns there have been.
That is pay. We did have a few wins over pay but governments of all persuasions have remained steadfastly opposed to rewarding teachers for the work they put in for the children of this country. There have been countless protestations about treating teachers as “professionals” but governments have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to back their hollow rhetoric up with action.
Teachers in the public system are still paid appallingly.
The amount of paperwork the contemporary teacher is being forced to complete prevents them from focussing on teaching. Much of this paperwork is to meant to make teachers accountable. It ignores the obvious fact that the people who really make teachers accountable are the students. If you’re not prepared you will face a riot.
Filling in a form to prove you have taught a unit of work doesn’t mean you have. It means you have filled in a form, often papering over the cracks. When I started out we ticked off work as we did it in Registers. This took minutes, not hours. Hours that could be spent preparing lessons or giving individual tuition.
Trying to homogenise teachers by making them fill in forms ignores the fact that one of the wonderful things about teachers is that they are different and have as many different approaches to teaching as there are teachers.
A students school experience should be seen in the context of a myriad of influences and approaches that prepare them for a diverse world. One person’s meat is another’s poison. We’re all different and that’s what makes schools such dynamic places. Trying to make us all clones by “standardising” everything necessarily takes away the very individuality that students find so exciting.
Writing reports is a case in point.
When I started out, writing school reports was a joy. It was an opportunity to share with parents what I really felt about how their children were progressing. I loved being able to be honest and I know that parents appreciated it, even if I wasn’t always giving them good news. I loved writing the way I wrote and not being forced to write in clichés.
The sheer volume of non teaching work being foisted on teachers not only takes time away from teaching, it means that teachers are too busy to do anything else.
When I started out fifty years ago, I floundered. I couldn’t control my classes. I was desperate. Fortunately, the Head of Maths came to my rescue, even though I was an English teacher. I was mentored by him and the Librarian and the Music teacher.
If that was now, I’d be left to my own devices to manage as best I could.
This is why there are teacher shortages. There are so many demands placed on us that teaching students almost becomes secondary to fulfilling bureaucratic demands.
When I went through uni I had a Teacher’s Scholarship that enabled me to complete my degree and gave me a future path.
If I wanted to do something outside the box, like coach a footy team, I could drive the kids home after training without filling in endless Risk Assessment Forms. When I took my wonderful Year 9’s to the rotunda to perform “Jabberwocky” I didn’t have to fill in a Risk Assessment form. The same when I took my water polo team to Tamworth for a Carnival .
It’s time to give teacher’s the pay they deserve, the room to do what they love doing and the time to help new teachers find their feet.