Australians are learning how valuable teachers really are

Well that did not take long, did it? A couple of weeks and already many parents want schools re-opened because, shock horror, they have discovered that educating is not as easy as it looks.

Take this contribution from an anonymous reader on The Age when asked about how homeschooling is travelling:

An absolute nightmare! Three kids, grade 2, grade 5 and year 7. Wifi is dropping in and out, grade 2 can’t concentrate with the noise, distraction. He needs the structure of a classroom environment at school. My other 2 children are trying their best. Kids need routine and structure. This is experimental learning at best, and not what my children deserve. Open schools up Dan Andrews! You’re at odds with the PM on this. – Anonymous

Need a holiday, do we?

A lot will change as a result of COVID-19, but a welcome change would be many Australians’ attitudes towards teachers. Perhaps we might see less digs at teachers about their so-called generous holidays now that parents have experienced the mental and physical exhaustion from trying to shoulder the load of a teacher on one or two kids. Their own kids, mind you.

Multiply that by 13 and you get the standard classroom of a teacher. Exhausted by monitoring one child’s learning? Try 25. Multiply that by 5 classes and you get the standard high school teacher’s responsibility of 125 students to look after.

It’s a nightmare having a 15-year-old turning 16 “studying from home”. I cannot micromanage him whilst I am working from home. – John

You see, the problem with most people is that they think they are experts on education because they have been in a classroom at some point in their lives. How hard could it be? They quip. Apparently, pretty difficult, as many have learnt.

After 30 minutes both my kids are crying and my wife is angry at me. I now have a greater respect for teachers. Let’s pay them more. – Anonymous

Teachers have grown used to the annual ritual of underwhelming international test results triggering a flurry of media headlines asserting that Australian schools are failing our kids. There’s the usual calls from politicians to weed out the ‘bad’ teachers, whatever that means. Some flirt with the idea of performance pay, failing to articulate exactly how performance can be measured.

Indeed, teachers have grown used to being society’s proverbial punching bag.

What are they teaching kids in schools these days, anyway?

Turns out, quite a lot, actually, as Australian homes have learnt over the past fortnight.

And many parents are just exhausted over the management side of things. Never mind the hours of preparation and correction that goes into a teacher’s standard work day. Don’t forget the camps, excursions, lunch clubs, after school tutoring, after school clubs, before school clubs, sports days, concerts, productions, wellbeing days, formals, debutant balls, carnivals, meetings…you get the picture.

After the first day, I’m now listening to very loud music to avoid drinking an entire bottle of wine. Maybe the kids (year 1 and 3) don’t need so much supervision at school but it seems at home they need to check the answer for everything and have no capacity to think for themselves. The school clearly has no idea what it’s doing and just sent home glorified homework tasks. My heart goes out to those trying to hold down jobs. Open the schools, this is ridiculous. – Anonymous

The frustration is palpable.

Granted, everyone is doing it tough during these unprecedented times and it is undoubtedly challenging for everyone in an unpredictable health and economic crisis. A shout out also must go to frontline workers such as retail staff, nurses, cleaners and delivery drivers.

Isn’t it fascinating that in times of crisis, we grow to appreciate who the real heavy lifters are?

So-called social influencers have faded into irrelevance, their shallow existence exposed as non-essential. But the real social influencers, teachers, are still going: planning online lessons, navigating new challenges, assessing student work, keeping up community morale.

Teachers have shown themselves to be remarkably adaptable, resilient and passionate during these unprecedented times. Sometimes, the glue that holds the edifice together is not quite visible until the edifice begins to break.

One would hope that in the future, after all this is over, teachers are not dismissed as whiners when they point out the challenging nature of their job to a skeptical population refusing to listen. One would also hope that when the term breaks do come around, the attitude is one of ‘well done, you’ve earnt it’.

In life, you never stop learning. Indeed, Australians, and the world, are learning how valuable teachers really are.