When I was a little girl, people would ask me that age-old question… “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Now this is a silly question to ask any child. How can a person of merely seven years old know what they want to be 20, 30, or 40 years from now? How does one know what they want to do for a living in order to support their future lifestyle and family, when they should be playing with Barbie dolls and tamagotchis (remember those?!) and having fun?
Well I knew. I did. I wanted to be a teacher. I dreamt of helping students to grow and learn, teaching them, inspiring them. I dreamt about making a difference to the minds of young people, to their parents, and to society. What I didn’t dream about was what was to come.
It started out all rainbows and sunshine. I loved my students and my students loved me. As a new teacher I received great feedback on my lessons, my teaching style, and the difference I was making. I received card after card addressed to “The best teacher in the whole wide world” along with colourful interpretations of what I would look like if I were a stick figure. I was showered with candles, soaps, and chocolates – more than I could ever consume in a lifetime. I was given many hugs and words of encouragement from my students about how much I had taught them.
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I can so relate to what this woman is saying. I have been at home for the past two days with a flu virus and last week, felt so fatigued. I am sure that some of this must be stress-related.
I love my work as a Kindergarten and Pre-Primary teacher but find it so difficult now so much has to be crammed into the curriculum that I never seem to be able to do anything properly to give the satisfaction of a job well done. It seems that every day something else is crammed into my already busy schedule; this programme or practicing for an assembly when Pre-Primary children never had to engage in this way before. Now they have also to engage in learning coding and robotics. Then today, it was my kids' turn to use the wonderful new adventure playground. So on my day of the week when I did not have duty, I did not actually have time to eat.
There are the inevitable assessments and by this time next week, I will have had to complete another round of these. Yet another programme has now been added into my schedule. It is actually a very good programme but takes yet another half hour on top of all the other hours and half hours that my kids are engaged elsewhere these days.
Then there is the requirement to run similar programmes in each early childhood class. So now there is a Father's Day morning tea coming up, along with Parents' Night in a couple of weeks.
if only I could simply focus on teaching my kids and keep my focus there instead of being split so many ways so nothing is ever covered fully these days. If the Pre-Primary children did not have to engage in formal writing classes, in handwriting and in more formal reading programmes. Just hearing the reading of the children before school each morning takes about half an hour that could be used in teaching the kids language engagement skills.
I am not planning to leave my job but find it more and more stressful and it is becoming more and more difficult to simply have a normal life outside of work and there is little balance any more.
Educators, not educrats, need to run the teaching profession. More and more bureaucratic expectations does not allow teachers the creative freedom they need to do their jobs well.
When fantastic teachers like Kathy Margolis in Qld, and Gabbie Stroud in NSW resign (and no doubt Hannah Dee as well), we should not only listen, but be solution oriented. Kathy is now an advocate for change: www.protectingchildhood.org
There is much we can learn from other countries, like Finland.
In Qld nearly 5000 parents and teachers have signed a petition to the Qld parliament focusing on the disress of early childhood education - "Age-appropriate education for happy healthy children and teachers". When children are unhappy, and teachers are unhappy, there is one predictable outcome - learning will suffer.
For Qld residents, the petition can be found here: https://www.parliament.qld....