Teachers deserve far more respect
FOR tonight’s homework I want you to think about your kids’ teachers and whether you could realistically spend a week in their shoes.
Rather than daydream about double the amount of annual leave, consider the hours spent dealing with the high-rotation whingeing, the repetitive instructions and the demand to have an answer for everything.
And that’s just from the parents.
When settling on teaching as a vocation in life, I don’t imagine an idealist would consider that a worrying chunk of time would be spent as a punch bag, both verbal and physical.
But haven’t we made teachers the whipping boys for everything that irritates us about our education system?
And, by some faulty extension, blamed them for the type of modern childhood engulfing our kids and all its perceived toxic influence?
This week teachers found themselves in the firing line again.
Two of them ‘refused’ to intervene and break up a student brawl in a high school. Video of the fight at Atwell College in Perth showed a pair of teen boys walloping each other.
Two teachers observed it, it was claimed but did not roll up their sleeves and step in. As with any video, we only get a slice of the real time circumstances but according to witnesses, the ruckus only ran out of steam when another member of staff intervened.
The teacher’s union meanwhile has defended the response, but in the mix is this implicit theory: that the teachers hesitated out of fear that parents could press criminal assault charges.
These educators put their personal safety first and who can blame them. What if the teachers had stepped in and got hit themselves?
If you are bristling with righteous ire because you think a teacher’s job is to mop up the mess, then consider this.
We have painted ourselves into this corner.
Teachers were once considered professionals who used to command unquestioned respect. I grew up with the attitude drummed into me.
But let’s look at teaching in this millennium: It’s come a long way from my school days where the strap and a clip over the ear from your teacher were forms of discipline, not that I agree with corporal punishment. Now we have educators who are on high alert to be PC and risk averse at all costs.
A teacher friend of mine said her colleagues often refer to the “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” principle when tackling a career they still cherish because, let’s not forget, it is a privilege to influence young minds.
“The days of swooping in because you care about the kids first and yourself second are long gone,” she said. LOCAL TEACHER
I“Parents expect you to be a surrogate parent during school hours fixing things like manners and peer dramas. I wonder how I get through the curriculum sometimes and every time we go through NAPLAN I get bombarded by the tiger mums and dads wondering why we are not doing better.”
Her comments on NAPLAN are illuminating after revelations that it is parents rather than teachers who are fans of the controversial My School website which reports how schools do because they want to see how their child’s school is performing.
Users of My School have soared from 839,000 in 2015 to 1.74 million last year.
NAPLAN has become the yardstick by which parents are encouraged to judge the success of a school.
But rankings cannot reflect the suitability of a school for every student. And parents should not expect it to be, nor should they use less than average results to belittle the work of our teachers.
I know myself the key to being informed is regular contact with their teachers and when you find out your child needs extra support, doing what you need to do to make it happen. It comes down to two simple words – paying attention.
A case in point is a friend with a special needs son worried about bullying. Keen to see his educational needs were met, she was leaning towards a small alternative high school with great NAPLAN results.
It was a learning environment where students were given the freedom to choose their “educational pathways” and one where she felt he would be accepted, cared for and nurtured.
My friend asked her son’s Year Six teacher what she thought about that idea. To her credit, this teacher didn’t choose to sit on the fence and offer a lame, ‘whatever you think, you’re his mum’ line.
No, she offered her opinion as an educator who had got to know the child in a school setting over the course of six years.
She advised my friend against ‘the easy road’, pointing out that such a move would not equip him for the ‘real’ world.
What would he do at the end of six years of high school, when would his real world education begin? The older he got, the harder it would be to learn that rules and regulations were a part of life.
After their chat, my friend decided to follow the teacher’s advice and send her son to the local high school. It might not have been top of the NAPLAN league table, or full of glowing students who got along harmoniously, but it was where his social group was and it would be where he could cut his teeth on the real world.
And how right that teacher was. Six years was gone in the blink of an eye. It was painful, almost unbearable at times, but her son persevered. Support was given when it was needed, and a step back taken when it was warranted. And everything the teacher said would happen, it happened.
He finished school, went to university and he strode out into his adult life with confidence and the knowledge only he could make things happen in life.
Instead of bagging out the teachers for their apparent lack of action in this schoolyard scrap, how about we see it as a call to arms of sorts. That watershed moment when we realise how disempowered our educators have become.
Let’s return some of that power so that they don’t feel they are standing in quicksand day in, day out.
PARENTS EXPECT YOU TO BE A SURROGATE PARENT DURING SCHOOL HOURS FIXING THINGS LIKE MANNERS AND PEER DRAMAS. I WONDER HOW GET THROUGH THE CURRICULUM SOMETIMES