Tired Teachers

Keep going, whatever happens.

Mr O’Neill from Daria

A little while ago I wrote a piece about teaching. I think it was in response to my last Year 12 Media class. I was emotional. I decided not to publish it because when I read it back it felt more like a personal outpouring than anything that needed to be shared.

I constantly wrestle with my relationship with teaching. I got into teaching to talk about Media and to increase people’s awareness of it. It just so happens that when you’re a teacher, you also must deal with the bureaucracy of being in an educational setting. Which a lot of the time, feels like you’re still in high school yourself.

The day this is published marks the beginning of the Year 12 written exams. For those of us who aren’t familiar with the system, here is the briefest of recaps.

Year 12 is the final year of high school in Australia. If students’ study VCE, they may also have written exams which provides them with an ATAR – a score which allows them entry into certain university courses. I say the terms ‘may’ and ‘certain’ because the last few years have seen a huge shift in university entry requirements as well as students wanting to sit exams to get this score at all. On average, students are generally 17 or 18 in Year 12. 18 is also the legal drinking age in Australia, as well as the age you can get into licensed venues. Just so you get the picture.

So today, Year 12 students across the state will sit down to their English exam. Arguably the most important as many university courses only require a score of 25 or more in English (scores are out of 50). Students are ranked and the scores are modified based on a whole host of factors. It’s a ridiculous system, but it’s the one we work in.

I am trying to contextualise one element of what it is like to be in a school now. As in this time of year.

I teach upper secondary. So, this year is very much about winding down with a view towards exams, but it is also full of encouraging, supporting, begging students to get through. There are results due and it is an excellent time to question what you could’ve done differently throughout the year and blame yourself for students not doing the work. I am more stressed about exams now than I was when I sat them as a student, even though now, I have far less control. The longer I teach (and next year will be my tenth in the department), the more I am able to let go about this stuff. But sometimes, I get completely wound up by it all and vow to keep better records. As if an excel spreadsheet is going to prevent this from happening again. But even as I type this, I know I believe that it might.

So that’s the day-to-day minutiae of teaching at the moment. But there is also the broader environment of teacher, and that is that a lot of teachers are very fucking tired. And that’s what takes us to the impacts of Covid.

I will just pause for a second and point out that many industries were completely drained by the pandemic. And in many ways, the cracks that formed were pre-existing fissures that were compounded by the pressure. I am only going to speak about teaching because that is the only industry I worked in throughout this time.

This year is the first in three years, in which we have completed (well, so far) the school year at school with no state-wide lockdowns. I work in Melbourne, just for further context.

And whilst there may not have been any formal lockdowns, there has been a rolling roster of students and staff away. It’s relentless.

So, you have a group of students who have been studying from home for two years, whatever that has looked like for them, return to a class where the learning levels, social capacity and study skills, are all over the place. And then, they all take turns being away like that whack-a-mole game, just when it seems like you have a handle on the lay of the land, something pops up.

The expectation for teachers is that we continue. Work is on the learning management system we scrambled to familiarise ourselves during the pandemic and even though we too were living through the pandemic, we just pretend we didn’t. And whilst students are expected to continue, there is a lot more leeway when they don’t. Deadlines are extended and work is modified. So many rules simply go out the window because they are here, and that’s the win. And it is the win. But it makes everything else seem very flaky. So, reinforcing structures around deadlines, the state-wide phone ban, dress codes etc. are completely pointless but still expected. Even though we are all far too tired to tackle these things.

There are countless articles and interviews out about the number of teachers leaving teaching. The government seems to be hitting back by trying to encourage people to enter the field. Just this morning I was browsing Broadsheet, where I was presented with a banner ad encouraging people to ‘Teach the future’ and make an impact. Interestingly, the page also outlines opportunities for those already in the field. I was recently at a birthday party where someone mentioned that the government may be bringing back the Diploma of Education, a course that was superseded by the Masters of Teaching in 2013. The Masters was partly inspired by the Melbourne University Model where everyone has to do an Arts degree before studying anything with any specificity. I believe it was also in response to the common assumption about the numeracy and literacy levels of teachers. The move to head back to the Diploma of Education is encouraging for those who are thinking of becoming teachers, but perhaps don’t want the time and cost commitment of the Masters.

The year I graduated from teaching was the final year the Diploma of Education was running. I chose the Masters because there was so much discussion about it being a valuable thing to have, but the fact I have a Masters have never come up once in applying for jobs. I had a really tough time job hunting and love the fact that teachers are needed again, it’s a more spirited environment for those who are studying and looking for work.

Another piece of media in regard to teaching I came across today was in a Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) email. So the VIT messaging is bias but nonetheless it’s relevant to what we are talking about. This Friday, the 28th is World Teachers Day, so acknowledge this, VIT asked 12 teachers ‘What does it mean to be a teacher?’. The responses are passionate and articulate.

The government’s encouragement of teachers and the VITs propaganda speak to a very wholesome side of the industry. I am not completely bitter. I understand the impact of education and I wish more students would realise how fucking lucky they are to have access to education.

I don’t think that the teaching industry will see many big changes to actually address many of the issues we are dealing with. The ability to relate to the new generations is getting harder as I get older, we will keep seeing students whose learning has huge gaps and keep trying to make up for it in the little time we have in class each week.

This piece feels haphazard. I don’t feel that I have fully articulated the strange nature of the teaching landscape as it stands. Whilst I am aware of the trends and shift in teaching, I am also grappling with the micro elements of this job. This piece seems to mirror that, shifting between explaining the logistics of the school and its purpose, to bitterness towards those with energy and passion, resentment about what is expected, but also the massive responsibility and privilege I feel to teach media.

Balancing all these things is tricky, no wonder we are tired.