Is too much expected of teachers?
Is too much expected of today’s teacher? I wonder this as I sit at home, unable to work due to a situation that arose during a training session at school.
I keep remembering a T-shirt I saw online which said “I Teach: What's your superpower?” I loved it. I almost bought it. But the thing is, teachers are not superheroes and it's dangerous to pretend they are, particularly when the demands the government makes on teachers and how they engage with students are rising and becoming ever more taxing on body and soul.
Don't get me wrong, most of it is worthwhile. All of it is well-meaning. People in schools generally work as hard as they can, for the best of reasons.
They are passionate about their subjects, or they genuinely love sharing knowledge with, and building the skills of young people. Or they believe strongly in the transformative potential of education. They want to shape minds and provide hope and choice; for children mired in poverty, or communities with little potential for future employment or kids who simply wouldn't know any different otherwise.
We are strong, hard-working, well-educated and highly skilled professionals, but we are also human. We are weak and vulnerable, we have parents and children, relationships that start up or break down. We have pasts and frail human bodies and psyches, just like everyone else. Yet even when we are struggling, we have no choice but to keep up the superhero act.
When I first started teaching in the mid-1990s, the expectation was that I would be knowledgeable in my subject area, punctual, quick to grade work, that I would maintain an orderly classroom and appropriate relationships with students, and that in the event of them suffering some accident, I would act 'in loco parentis' – basically I would step into a parental role rather than walking away and leaving them to bleed.
The curriculum was all about understanding key knowledge and gaining skills either for apprenticeship or university. We catered to the 'whole child' by providing co-curricular activities like debating or sport. Bullying was an issue dealt with by the toughest assistant principal, and there was no such thing as social media. Kids (and poor beginning teachers) didn't have mobile phones.
In contrast, teachers who work in public schools in Australia today are not quite so likely to be the font of all knowledge in their subject. Rather, they are required to do the - often more difficult - task of helping students to navigate their way through the incredible wealth of knowledge and detritus available on the internet.
Their job is to help students to find meaning; sort fact from fiction, truth from lies, the relevant from the purely fascinating. They - we - are also expected to watch over the 'whole child' in a way we never have before. Mandatory reporting when we form a reasonable belief that a child is suffering abuse is the tip of the iceberg.
In recent years, in response to a very real need in society, there have been several government initiatives aimed at supporting students in need. This started with reactive work, such as training provided to teachers and school leaders in 2014 under the Safe Minds framework. Teachers were trained to 'NIP it in the bud', (Notice, Inquire and Plan for supporting students in distress) There were a great variety of supporting resources created and supplied to teachers and their managers, including tip sheets, safety maps and flow charts.
It’s true that teachers are in a perfect position to be the first outside of the family to notice a child experiencing abuse. Particularly during the primary years, teachers often spend more time with children than their parents do.
But the task-switching required of a professional trying to impart knowledge and skills, get students working collaboratively and performing well on assessments, is already enormous. Adding this (NIP) requirement increases both the cognitive and the emotional load for a teacher significantly.
Quite apart from this, many teachers have enough to do just managing crowd-control. Add to this the fact that they often haven't had time to go to the bathroom since breakfast, and the whole becomes utterly unmanageable and of course, this is on top of the Victorian Curriculum's Capabilities, which are worthy of another article.
That was before the report on the Royal Commission into family violence was tabled to parliament in 2016. The Royal Commission made 227 recommendations, one of which was related to schools, and which birthed the Respectful Relationships Initiative.
The Respectful Relationships (RR) initiative is different to its forebears in that it forms part of the core curriculum of Victorian government schools. It is meant to be introduced schoolwide (Students, Staff, Parents and the wider community) and carries with it another set of curriculum resources which are to be taught to all year levels, by all teachers, regardless of their comfort or expertise.
Teachers are used to teaching skills not traditionally associated with their subject areas - for example, we teach writing in science and mathematics, and mathematical and scientific literacy are intrinsic to all subjects. Respectful Relationships, however, is different. The content is crucial for students to understand but delves deeply into areas that were traditionally the realm of the family.
The mission statement says: “Everyone in our community deserves to be respected, valued and treated equally. We know that changes in attitudes and behaviours can be achieved when positive attitudes, behaviours and equality are embedded in our education settings.”
The content covers some fairly standard fare, such as personal strengths and coping mechanisms, problem solving and stress-management. But it adds new material, related to emotional literacy, help-seeking, gender, identity and power.
Much of this is work we have been doing in schools for years, but the difference is that this curriculum looks at all of these topics through a gendered lens, with a focus on power. The mantra of the program is that gender-based violence happens when there is an imbalance of power, and that it's all about power and control.
Much of the work is subtle and it's all useful. It's predicated on excellent thinking. The resources have been developed by brilliant academics. It's kid-friendly, age-appropriate and usable. But it's also very hard.
Hard for teachers to deliver who are not superheroes. Who have, as mentioned before, personal histories that may impact on their ability to deal rationally and without emotion with these topics. As part of the initiative teachers have been provided with training on responding to disclosures from adults or children who may show distress during or after a session, or otherwise show signs of being triggered by the content.
This is helpful, but what if it's the teacher who is triggered? What if this is where the superhero's kryptonite is buried? We know the problem of family violence is widespread and spans all strata of society, so of course teachers will be among the victims.
The initiative doesn't have specific resources or support built into it for teachers who show signs of being emotionally triggered by the content.
I know this because I am one of them. I am writing this from home, having been unable to attend work for some time due to a depressive episode brought on by being triggered during training. I am strong, I have been dealing with my personal issues very well for many years, but having to face them in the workplace, where I am not just a teacher but a leader, where it's not okay to not be okay, was too much.
It broke me, and I have heard anecdotal stories of other school leaders and teachers having similar experiences. I'm not sure when I'll be able to go back to work at full capacity, and meanwhile my students suffer.
I don't know what the answer is. I believe in the RR program and its aims. I believe that those delivering the program are doing their best with the resources available to them.
I believe that the program is moderately wellresourced, as these things go. But I also know that the government throwing money at schools to help them deliver this program is not going to fix this issue, and may well break more teachers than we, as a society, can afford to lose.