By REBECCA SPARROW
This week my five-year-old pranced into the kitchen and announced she wanted to be a teacher. I winced.
Actually I did more than that. As she twirled past me wearing her Wonder Woman cape and Dora The Explorer pajamas I thought, ‘Teaching? Oh God, I hope not.’
Why?
It’s simple. I think it’s one of the hardest, most physically and emotionally demanding professions. A profession that from where I’m standing is all take and not a lot of give.
I mean, would YOU do it?
Do what? The hours. The overtime. The marking. The mandatory “volunteering” after school and on weekends to coach the softball team or the debating team or accompany the year 11s on camp. The out-of-school-hours mentoring and tutoring. The keeping up with the constant changes to curriculum. The endless marking of papers and filling in reports and planning lessons and testing, testing, testing of the students and ANSWERING EMAILS FROM PARENTS. And the constant data input and analysis. Ask a teacher about that sometime, I dare you.
Our expectations on teachers are ludicrously high and they’re only getting higher. Today we expect them to teach our – increasingly bolshie, short on attention span – children everything from maths and English to manners and morals. Oh and cyber-safety. And resilience.
We make a song and dance about our teachers’ responsibility to cherish and nurture and inspire our kids. And then regularly question their professional judgment (‘What do you mean Jack is being a bully? He doesn’t behave like that at home. What do you mean Abbey only deserves a B- on her report on The Foods of Alsace-Lorraine?).
Their hours are long, the pressure is huge and their pay is, well, mediocre for a profession where being sworn at or physically threatened by disgruntled teenagers is – for some – a daily occurrence.
Last week I spent two hours on the phone to Cee*, a high school teacher. She’s been doing this job for 17 years. She does it because she loves it. But it’s not for the faint-hearted.
We talk about the obsession with NAPLAN and the race to find the magic bullet to churning out smarter kids without also focusing on nurturing curiosity and resilience and a love of learning.
We talk about how endless pedagogy means that teachers can no longer teach in their own unique way like they did when we were kids. Oh Captain, my Captain is long gone.
We talk about how once teachers simply taught their classes and gave feedback via report cards at the end of each term. Today? Today it’s about constant assessment with students being tracked every 4-5 weeks with the heavy-weight of expectation that every student will ‘lift’ each time.
Cee says, “You can’t always get a lift in a 5 week cycle. Sometimes the victory is not going backwards. Sometimes the victory with a child is their attendance – that they turned up and had a go even though they know their spelling will be wrong. Every child can learn but not every child is an A student.”
Top Comments
There are some amazing teachers out there don't get me wrong when I say what I'm about to say: there are far too many teachers teaching today who have no compassion or heart for their students and are doing more damage than good. I was bullied by several teachers as a child. Through primary and highschool, simply because I came from a dysfunctional background. Now I had to endure my daughter being treated badly by her most recent teacher. We've given up on the education system and will be home-schooling for the foreseeable future. Will I whine and complain about being a full time mum, teacher, business owner and housewife? No. So you teachers who whine about long hours and extra curricular commitments, you've got nothing on full time parents or full time professional doctors, lawyers, nurses.
I had many teachers work above and beyond for me also I won't lie they put up with a lot... As a student you can always tell which teachers do it because they love it and they are the ones that are truly the best at their job. Thanks Guys <3