Teaching is a ‘sweet gig’
Teachers need to stop sulking and realise every job is hard, said one deputy principal yesterday, as almost 30,000 of his colleagues went on strike.
The acting deputy head teacher at a school in the Nelson region said: ‘‘Look, teaching isn’t a walk in the park. But it’s a pretty sweet gig.’’
The man, who doesn’t want to be named for fear of jeopardising future job prospects, was not on the picket line yesterday.
‘‘I’m so annoyed with my fellow teachers.’’ He said he believed there was no good reason for the strike.
‘‘So we’re undervalued – in our eyes – and we’ve ‘only’ had inflation matching increases for the past decade. Join the queue with the nurses.
‘‘So we’re doing a really tough job with increasingly demanding ‘customers’. Join the queue with the retail sector.’’
Teachers walking off the job when they did not get their way did not set a good example to the children they taught, he said.
‘‘I don’t believe in sulking.’’ ‘‘I don’t think a strike really fits with ... being resilient, having a positive attitude and persisting, all the things we’re trying to instil in our kids.’’
He said he ‘‘disagrees fundamentally’’ with what the unions were after, saying the demands for an increase in pay and smaller class sizes benefited teachers, not students. He would rather see that money poured in to putting more adults in the classroom, giving each class a dedicated teacher aide, in a similar model to the Finnish system.
He became a teacher a decade ago after a seven-year stint in private equity in London and Auckland. While he is currently acting deputy head, the size of his school means he is fulltime in class teaching. Teachers who thought they would have an easier ride in the corporate world were wearing rose-tinted glasses, he said.
‘‘You want your 2 to 3 per cent pay rise every year in a private company – you better bloody earn it.’’ Before studying, he interned at two schools on Auckland’s North Shore. The ‘‘wonderful’’ experience convinced him it was time for a career change – which also meant turning his back on a six-figure salary and an annual 20 per cent bonus.
But while the money might not be quite as good in teaching, he said, his workday was now considerably shorter.
‘‘I’m away from work by 4pm almost every day, answer a few emails in the evening and mark for an hour on Sunday during term time. That’s it.
‘‘I was doing far more in London when my day would begin with a 6am commute ... or in Auckland where leaving the office before 5pm was frowned upon, even on Friday.’’
In the run-up to the strike, teachers have been vocal about their workloads – it’s more than a 9 to 3 job, they say.
So what does he say to the teachers complaining of being overworked? ‘‘Work smarter ... become more efficient.’’
There was ‘‘a bit of woe is me’’ in their complaints, he said, and teachers needed to accept working in the evenings was part of most jobs. As for the teachers who said they worked through the holidays – he was sceptical.
He said while spending holidays working might be necessary in the first few years, after that teachers should have resources and lessons under their belt. ‘‘Two solid eight-hour days in the holidays and I can prepare everything I’ll need for the next 10 weeks.’’
Teaching was a ‘‘brilliant, rewarding’’ job, he said.