The Blues

Mondayitis: Teaching

On October 18, 2010, in Ranting, Work, by Rosie

Mondayitis: (noun) a great time of the week for a rant.

Last week, I sat and chatted with two of my oldest friends about teaching. These women have been in the profession for years (they are SO much older than me) and there have been stages in our lives when we were all teaching at the same time, in similar types of schools.

The old girls, Smythe and Soch, are what we would call ‘excellent’ teachers. I don’t say this because we’re friends. They’re organized, efficient women, good time managers *coughs* (usually) committed to the people intensive work of their profession, schooled in curriculum, classroom management and the motivation of students.

We started to discuss the perception of the teacher. And this, ladies and jellyspoons, is where the ranting starts.

In Australia, the teacher is often perceived as bloody slack. They rock into school after the bell, they bring the newspaper with them, they spend first period on Facebook, they wander down the street at lunchtime. Oh, and they go home at 3.25, because duh, that’s when the frigging kids leave.

Then there are the holidays, for the love of learning! Every flaming ten weeks, they walk out of there, borrowed laptop in hand (probably swiped some of the school equipment to take home and organize their beach volleyball tournament) and go to Brizzy or Bali or Botswana.

After a fortnight of doin’ nuffin, they swan back — complaining that their break hasn’t been long enough (oh, and they don’t get paid enough) — to start week one of another term. By week ten, they’re back to tanning on the sand and hitting the shopping complexes with abandon. They borrow another school laptop coz they were too lazy to bring the other one back at the start of this term.

They are the laziest, over-glorified, under worked bludgers today!

Smythe, Soch and I bantered back and forth over the table about the misconceptions of the teaching role. The fact that many believe they have a right to judge, comment and pass decrees about a teacher’s workload, holidays, value-for-money worth is something that sticks in their craw. Or claw?

Smythe raised a question along the lines of ‘What gives people the right to comment on what we do in the day? As though they know? How do they think they know? Just because they went to school?’

We thought this might be the case. Well, because I had Mrs Aldon in Year 9 maths, she never did any work, didn’t mark homework, was out of there by 3.20, was late to class, didn’t care … then other people (wot are not teachers) use Mrs Aldon as their yardstick for lambasting the majority of people in this profession.

And the word is profession. If there’s a more important job than teaching the future cleaners, IT people, leaders, doctors, lawyers, labourers, drivers, retail assistants, then it should be declared vital. Teachers are vital too. Their skills and care contribute to community and the future just as much as the local member of parliament, the banker, the butcher. Even the ol’ candlestick maker. He/she had a wick-ed teacher that lit a spark somewhere.

Do teachers slag off at other professions, saying the postman is slack coz he/she rides a motorbike? Feck, he/she should be walking. Do teachers condemn builders for leaving a site when it’s 38 degrees C? God, builders are soft these days! Do teachers say that IT people are overpaid, get too many holidays, are on Facebook too much? Coz I’m sure they are, if only to play those bizarre games or hit the ‘poke’ button. (Nerds get off on that!)

Generally, they don’t! Also? Many people in our society hold teachers in high regard, it’s just the element of folks who continue to raise the holidays=slackness + unfair equation. (Thank a maths teacher if you can work that out!) In fact, both Soch and Symthe had been faced with such aspersions quite recently, a laughable fact considering they both regularly work ten hour days, not including marking and preparation on the weekend.

‘Ten hour days? some people might be heard to cry! ’Surely this means they are wasting a lot of time!’

Nope. It’s just that none of the admin, assessment, paperwork, accreditation, personal development, planning meetings, board meetings, year level meetings, marking, marking, marking … (etc, etc, etc) can be done when the children or teenagers are in your working space, taking up face. Or is that in your working face, taking up space?

Dunno! I probably need to ask an English teacher.

The moral of this story? There are slack teachers out there, just as there are slack receptionists, soldiers, sailors, tailors, whalers (they are blubbering about out at sea) neurologists, biologists, taxidermists (gosh, I’m getting stuffed writing all this down).

The majority of teachers work dam, damn hard. If you can read this, plan your next meal, figure out how much it’s going to cost and write a list at the same time, you can thank your teacher. Next time you see one, give them an apple … there’s no more school laptops left to borrow.