Why are there so few male teachers in our schools?
Why is it that when a Government is in strife it immediately reaches for the knife and cuts the education budget?
Why doesn’t the Federal Government bite the bullet and institute the recommendations of the Gonski Report instead of holding endless meetings with education Ministers and then releasing warm and fuzzy press releases about how much they really care?
Why are teachers constantly under the pump?
These are some of the questions that teachers around the country ask themselves as they saddle up for another 40 with a rampaging Year 9 or try to inspire a surly Year 10. It is the question that flits across their minds as they are reminded to check the toilets in yet another staff meeting.
When it comes to marking their own efforts, teachers are very hard on themselves.
Quite often they think they are failing their charges, often they worry about whether they are on top of the subject they are teaching.
They spend their lives trying to re-invent ways to make their teaching interesting. No teacher wants their kids to do badly. I have yet to meet a teacher who wanted their Year 12 class to get bad marks in the HSC. Not one.
And yet teachers constantly feel under siege.
At a recent signing session for my new book Playground Duty, a teacher thanked me because she said it would make it easier for her to admit to being a teacher when someone asked her what she did for a living.
I was touched by her words but I was appalled to think that her confidence had been so eroded.
Every parent on the planet wants their child to get the best teaching available. A lot of parents will go to extraordinary lengths to get them into what they perceive are the “best” schools.
The relationship between teachers and students is unique.
Teachers see kids at their most vulnerable and most exposed. They care for them and quite often protect them. When children are struggling, teachers do everything in their power to help them find a way through the maze. This seems to go unnoticed by a lot of parents and the public at large. Many teachers spend sleepless nights worrying about how their charges are going.
When you consider they might have six different classes of 25, age range from 12-18, that’s a lot of kids to worry about.
Teaching is a wonderful occupation. That’s one of our best-kept secrets.
Lots of incredible things go on in classrooms around the country every minute of the school day. Lots of special relationships are formed and lots of young people are inspired to believe in themselves and go places they never dreamt of.
By the same token, lots of teachers are burnt out and frustrated. They wake up to news of more funding cuts or carping from sections of the media about their lack of professionalism.
Which brings me back to my initial question about why there are so few male teachers in our schools?
A lot of men consider teaching as an occupation but reject it because of the lack of respect for the profession in the wider community.
Teaching isn’t a high status occupation in this country. It is one of the most important but it isn’t high status.
How many stories do we read about great teachers? How often do we hear about what really goes on in the classroom? How often are teachers celebrated? How hard is it for teachers to maintain reasonable conditions? How attractive are the financial incentives to take up a teaching career.
There are more reports into education than most of us have hot dinners and yet, how many of them have been instituted?
How many, like the Gonski Report, are destined to be left to gather dust?
What is really strange about this is that nearly everyone has a story about a teacher who changed their lives, who provided that light bulb moment that inspired them to go somewhere they never imagined they could go.
Teaching is only deemed newsworthy when it’s time to cut the budget, make motherhood statements or when teachers have the temerity to try and improve conditions for our future generations.
It is high time we tried to understand and appreciate what teachers do and offer them the support they deserve.
*Join The Hoopla’s discussion on the teacher that inspired you here.
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* Ned Manning has taught in a number of high schools and tertiary institutions. He was a Senior Examiner in HSC Drama in NSW and is a past recipient of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. He has written extensively about teaching, how to be a playwright and coaches drama students. He also works as an actor. You can find everything Ned at: www.nedmanning.com
Playground Duty received this review from Amanda Caldwell at the NSW Writers’ Centre:
While Playground Duty provides specific insight into the teaching of drama and performing, its lessons are wider than that. It shows the value that one person with drive, ambition and compassion can offer by applying themselves to teaching (or anything).
BUY THE BOOK
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10 Responses
Thanks Ned!!
I am sitting here with tears in my eyes…. Between my husband and I ,we have taught for 72 years. He was a High School Industrial Arts Teacher…..and I was a Primary School Teacher. We loved our jobs.
Never a day goes past in our shopping centres or cinemas or football or theatre that either of us are not pulled up and sharing the lives of our wonderful ex students-some of their children we have taught and some um um grandchildren!
The job was always stimulating. There was a complex interaction between curriculum, welfare, funding, programming, lesson delivery, excursions, the never ending search for updates, the writing of a progam for the local school reports, the never ending dilemma of ever decreasing funding, the lack of up to date proffessional development, the parent-teacher interviews, the school shows and fetes and Christmas pageants, assemblies and the list goes on…. Did we really do all of that? No wonder we were tired at the end of the term.
But then there are the up sides- the absolute privilege of being allowed to look after someone else’s child and to know them intimately for a year. The joyful moment when the boy in the foetal positon under your desk at the beginning of the year stands up and talks to the class at the end of year. The time that you see that light turn on in a Maths lesson for someone who is struggling. The boy who decides to learn to read because he just loves the stories you read him….The class considered the “mottley” crew who work in absolute unison at school assembly…… and for my husband the many weekends and holidays he spents with his Year 12 classes being rewarded with exhibits at the Power House Museum.
The creativity is is on every level – relationships, the lesson delivery, the language and the used of scrounged recycled boxes, the dab of paint and the use of a roll of sticky tape.
Why aren’t men doing it?
We have six boys. (Sorry men. )
All of them,having finished their studies (including teaching) are earning much more ,with less stress, in other areas.
ALL OF THEM say we worked too hard.
ALL OF THEM are very concerned about sexual taunts and abuse.
ALL OF THEM are earning nearly twice as much as we did together.
They see and hear how teachers are portrayed in the community, in the media .
They are all very proud of what we have done because all the wonderful things listed above and yet they have seen both of us struggle with stressful situations and wouldn’t do it to themselves.
Teachers are good, dedicated people.Despite the unfair attitudes and portrayals in the community we are or have been involved in a very noble profession. I have never taught for what people thought of me. I have taught for the chance to advance the next generation and the next and the next.
What a privilege.
I’ve recently realised that although I used to bag my senior high school as being pretty appalling, I’ve realised that just wasn’t the case. The teachers were actually incredibly dedicated. Us kids were the problem. Anyway, my English teacher was that one teacher you never forget. She kept retiring and they kept bringing her back. She was the smartest person I’d ever met, and the only teacher that could shut down the naughtiest of kids with a withering glance. She was old school, but entirely modern. A true legend, and I think of her often.
Teaching is the profession that creates all others. Yet it is still not respected!!
Go Ned!!
Brilliant article, Ned Manning.
Teaching, like nursing, childcare, aged care and parenthood, is not respected basically because it is an underpaid (or non paid) profession. You need dedication and possibly be a bit idealism to do these jobs and these are not idealistic times.
What is important to most captains of industry and politicians is making money, indeed a profit and no one profits from giving a child an education. Not until they are in the workforce, at least. How can you measure quantity in a child’s education? It is purely qualitative.
My husband is a teacher and floundering somewhat in that even applying for jobs in state schools is difficult. The dreaded Selection Criteria. A bureaucrats wet dream and a sensible man’s nightmare!
I say Strike and see what happens when you take away the passion. You end up with a land of miners and politicians with no vision or care for their fellow man.
Fantastic article-I totally agree with you. However, as a primary school teacher I felt a bit left out! We too work very hard-teaching all subject areas, and dealing with sometimes difficult students 5 days a week all day. I realise you have much more experience in how high schools operate but don’t forget about the teachers who prepare students for high school.
Teachers deserve so much more respect than is afforded to them. I went to see my sons teacher at the beginning of this term, just to thank her for taking so much time and effort with him (my son has been diagnosed with and is being treated for a mental illness that currently affects his learning). I could see the pride in her face as she told me how well he had done this past term and how she rang her own mother to tell her about how far my boy had come along. I have so much respect and admiration for the wonderful work she and all the teachers around this country. It is time the government took the schooling of our future generations more seriously – they are the future of our country, after all.
Thanks for all the great comments and apologies to any primary teachers who felt left out. You have my absolute admiration.
I always avoided telling strangers that I was a teacher… Then I was ‘Jeffed’….. older Vic teachers will know what that means.
After giving up full time teaching and applying my skills alternately… I finally started to be proud of being a ‘teacher’.
I have since taught kids of kids that I’ve taught… potentially grandkids will soon cross my path.
In the long run…. the rewards are there and really the slings and arrows are part of the package.
Primary school teachers do much much more than just prepare their small students for High School.
Right now in NSW alone thery are dealing with Austistic five year olds, kindies in wheelchairs, kindies with MS, or deaf or who have no English at all when they first start school.
Am I talking about children from dis advantaged backgrounds in the western suburbs? No way.
I’m talking about schools in the Eastern suburbs and North Shore.
Early Childhood Teachers are so important as they are a child’s first experience of education. if they get it wrong, it usually stay wrong right on through.