Noah Wants to Go Home
The Numbers We Don’t See
Australia is losing public school teachers at a rate faster than any whiteboard strategy or wellbeing program can fix. The Department of Education projects a shortfall of 4,100 secondary teachers this year. Teaching colleges trumpet record intakes, yet Victoria’s Swinburne University warns that fresh graduates can’t outrun the burnout already pushing many out of the profession.
But numbers can feel abstract - so let’s make it real: one Grade Two state school class. One dysregulated child. One unsupported teacher. This isn’t an exception. It’s the system laid bare - where increasingly complex needs meet dwindling resources, and the emotional weight of unmet demands drives teachers out - not in statistics, but in daily, exhausted resignation.
One Friday Morning
Yesterday, shortly before the lunch bell - during the allotted 10 minutes of in-class eating time, presumably to reduce litter and anaphylaxis risk - a new student asked me, as he always does before eating, if he could wash his hands. I said yes. His newfound friend, a boy whose diagnosis is incomplete, rushed to the door to follow him outside.
“Noah, you have to ask before you leave the class, so I know where you are. Can you please put your books away? Then you can go out.”
Noah grunted at the thwarting of his impulse, moved to the wall by the doorway, and slumped to sit. He started hitting the back of his head against the wall.
“Noah, please stop. It’s not safe - you might hurt yourself. Put your books away, and then you can go out.”
Noah didn’t stop. This wasn’t the first time. He wants attention. He wants what he wants. He wants me to say it’s okay - that he can do what he wants, and not do what he doesn’t like.
A Teacher Reflects
I am like Noah.
I have stared blankly into the face of my lead teacher, Mr Harris - a man whose passion and energy for education are matched by his exasperation at teachers who fail to grasp the concepts: sequences of lessons, adherence to policy, process, data, and curriculum.
As he lectured me about the art and science of teaching, all I wanted was to do things my way, in my own time. I signalled - perhaps too subtly - that I wasn’t coping, that I was overwhelmed. But nothing came back but more instructions. I was left alone, hoping the weight of my failures might eventually teach me what no one else had.
Later, I sought to mimic him. Stunned by the gap in knowledge and practice between myself and what the school, parents and the children’s future selves required of me, I aped his form. He was considered and competent. I was an amateur actor dropping cues and forgetting lines. For weeks I left my body and looked on as I resembled a misfiring machine when I taught - a one-armed man without pockets being asked to catch a shower of tennis balls during training.
When No One Can Help
Mr Harris entered my classroom, crouched at Noah’s level, and gently asked what was wrong. He then asked Noah to stop hurting himself, placing his hands between Noah’s head and the wall. Noah stopped.
“If I take my hands away, will you keep going?” He moved his hands. Noah resumed thumping.
Was it sadness? Pain? Frustration? I still tried to guess, even though these outbursts had become so familiar I was starting to ignore them.
Is it because of my ineptitude as a new teacher? Or because I do not keep the cracking pace and rigid structure that Mr Harris maintains in his class next door? Is it that I have no Learning Assistants assigned to my class? Or is it simply that Noah has had a hard life, a childhood thwarted by trauma? Is six hours in a crowded classroom even right for him?
Mr Harris asked what had triggered Noah. I explained the situation. He picked up his red vest and first aid bag, shrugged, and set off for his allocated yard duty.
He once told me that there are three parts to teaching: planning, instruction, and self-reflection - and if you don’t have the first two you can’t reflect on them. I didn’t have the energy or inclination to ask him how I was to do any of these things in this situation with Noah.
Lego and Learning Street
The lunch bell had gone, and I left Noah to his cranial self-harming in the classroom. In the quiet room a Learning Assistant was attempting to calm an upset child. I asked her to keep an eye on Noah, hoping he would stop if my presence was removed - if there was no one whose attention he wanted.
I went to the toilet and came back. He was still banging on.
“Noah, I’m going to set up Lego club. Your friend is there. Come with me and do Lego.”
No success.
I had been told many times I was good with kids. “The kids will love you.” “We need more like you in schools.” “You’re a natural.” Nothing about this felt natural. The three minutes of music before the bell, the open plan classrooms, the universal design for learning and the multi-tiered approach to everything are little comfort to me or Noah.
I went to the Prep rooms, got the tub of Lego, and took it to ‘Learning Street’, placing it in the middle of the colourful world map painted on the concrete. I sat down with a group of children who had been diagnosed as neurodivergent, needing a break from the cacophony of nearly a thousand children at play in the schoolyard.
Once they were focused, I left the Lego and checked on Noah. The Learning Assistant said the banging had gotten quite loud for a bit. I walked to the phone and rang the Assistant Principal - who was never there.
Noah Wants to Go Home
“Are you calling my parents? I am staying with my mum Mel.”
“No Noah. I am calling the Assistant Principal who is not there. So, I will have to call the Principal to ask him to come here and get you to stop hitting your head.”
“Will he call my parents to come and get me?”
"Is that what you want Noah? Do you want your parents to come and get you.”
“I want to go home.”
“Okay Noah. If you want to go home, pack your bag and I will take you to sick bay, and they will call your parents.”
Noah and I move through the crowd at a pace, him wanting out of there, and me wanting this situation, for which I am ill-equipped, and not supported for, to end.
“Hello,” I say to the bored school receptionist, “This young man has been banging the back of his head on a wall for the better part of half an hour. I am sure he has a headache, and he would like you to call his parents so he can go home.”
When mum Mel asks him why he banged his head over and over, what will he say? What will he be able to articulate?
A Job to Last
This was supposed to be the job that stuck. This noble, necessary profession seemed laden with possibilities as I rowed toward it. I looked at a career website, drew a travel boundary and chose the school. A few emails, a video chat and a resume later I was hired. There is a teacher shortage, and I was an older male applying for a job in a primary school where children with additional needs are catered for.
But Noah, myself and the system we find ourselves in are not fit for purpose. We are mismatched parts in a system that cannot hold us.
An Aquarium Lesson
Back in the classroom - after the sick bay, after the crowd - the day moved on, because it always does.
I packed up the Lego and taught the last hour - an impromptu lesson on the animals the children will see at the aquarium in a week’s time.
There was no PowerPoint. No “learning intention” projected onto the board, no success criteria to recite.
I explained the etymology of the word “aquarium”, showed them the website, noted a few facts about the sea creatures we’d encounter, asked them to copy some down, and draw a picture of their favourite.
It was, after all, 2:30pm on a Friday. They are in Grade Two. They are eight years old.
And all they wanted to do - and what Noah had achieved - was what we all felt.
We all wanted to go home.
A System Breaking, and Breaking Us with It
Noah’s story isn’t rare. A wealthy Sydney school funds a 22-person inclusion team. Public-school families scrape together $1,000 for an ADHD diagnosis. Laws now require every school to support neurodivergent students - but legislation doesn’t soothe a child banging their head or steady the teacher trying to cope.
The 2025 disability guidelines promise equity - but provide no extra staff, no new time, no added support. And on a Friday in the suburbs, it’s one public school teacher. Two dozen children. A quarter with complex needs.
When even the most committed teachers are overwhelmed, it’s not a personal failure.
It’s a system breaking - and teachers breaking with it.
Image by Viktoria Goda