Teaching - Why Do It?

Why would you want to be a teacher?

That is what I am frequently asked as I have been doing it a very long time.

Then normally people will explain their reasons for their question:

Young people lack discipline.

Social media has impacted negatively on young people.

Parents will blame you for their children’s behaviour.

The pay is adequate but not great.

Some students can be very rude.

The workload is demanding.

So … why would you?

I want to say straight away. It’s worth doing! Teaching is worth doing. Not just for the holidays. I have been a teacher for most of my 50 working years with a farming/counselling gap in the middle.

It is a worthwhile profession in that you are working with and potentially affecting the lives of children and young adults. Good schools can change neighbourhoods. I think my school is doing that. It is also incredibly rewarding, and I am not talking financial renumeration at this point.

You won’t get incredibly rich being a teacher as Australian teachers are not overpaid by world standards, but you will survive and you will be rewarded in many, many diverse and varied ways.

It can also be a lot of fun. Interactions with students and staff can delight once you know your way how to navigate the profession.

One proof!  Once or twice a year I gather and have dinner with my ‘boys’. These ‘boys’ who are all over 60 have mostly now retired from meaningful careers. I taught them at a small alternative school in Hawthorn just a mere 50 years ago. We have maintained the contact. Our dinners are full of laughter, ‘in jokes’, unchanging musical tastes and mutual respect and delight in the conversation. That is worth bottling.

I am a 75-year-old teacher still gainfully employed at a fine rural secondary college. The school is Phoenix P-12 in Ballarat. It was previously known as Sebastopol College. By many of the known indicators it is classified as a disadvantaged school = high unemployment, single parent families and some poverty. This is my 20th year there and I still love going to work each day. It is no hardship to come to school and be greeted by many students and staff as they go about their days and be of some use to them. There is a lot of banter.

This delight centres on an intelligent, skilled and committed leadership cohort with a supportive and responsible staff who care about and take responsibility for their charges. And, young students who are vibrant, challenging, mostly respectful and a joy to interact with despite some of them coming from challenging and exacting backgrounds. In my time here the school has built on and extended a culture of possibility, potential and commitment. As we say … ‘a postcode is not a life determinant.’ So, we have produced our doctors, lawyers, history lecturers, research scientists, change creators as well as our many tradesmen and tradeswomen who are the bread and butter of our fine school.

I was initially trained as an English teacher and have also managed my own counselling/therapy private practice. The school in its wisdom has employed me to best utilise both those skills in the distinct role of a Senior Mentor which means that I watch over senior students in both an academic and pastoral manner. I can help with an essay or presentation and I can offer help when personal issues are causing stress. For this privilege I am indebted to the school and its leaders.

How did I come to be here? I was lucky!

My very first student teacher placement was at a strange and innovative alternative school in suburban Hawthorn. It was called Swinburne Community School and it was one of a small number of Department sponsored schools that sprung up in the late 60s and early 70s - Sydney Road, Brinsley Road and this one - Swinburne. To name a few.

Inspired partly by A.S. Neill’s famous ‘Summerhill’ in England and a US led innovative push that centred around books such as Paul Goodman’s ‘Compulsory Miseducation’, they advocated freedom, personal responsibility and informal teaching and learning at a time of world-wide change and challenge to conservative norms.

100 students and seven staff made decisions together by consensus, decided curriculum, selected staff and even chose which classes students would attend. No uniforms. Lots of conversations about expectations and behaviour. Close personal relationships between staff, students and parents - all this in the confines of church halls, abandoned funeral parlours and parent garages.

It was a dynamic and exciting environment.

I learnt so much.

How to be friendly and supportive but not pretend to be a friend.

How to capture and hold a class when they didn’t have to be there.

How to work collaboratively within a team of talented and like-minded staff.

To treat students with due respect and expect the same in return.

The difference between progressive and permissive.

Some of our more famous alumni were: Gina Riley from ‘Kath and Kim’ fame, Martin Vinnecombe from Olympic cycling gold, Rowland Howard from rock and roll’s ‘Birthday Party’ and ‘Bad Seeds’, Bruce Milne from ‘Au Go Go’ records and many, many more.  It didn’t work for all students. Some bludged and then blamed but most grabbed the chance and made it work. It was a great school of its sort and time.

I was privileged to work there for ten years. The last two as Co-ordinator. And what I learnt there was that the paradox was, that for a ‘free’ school to operate well it really needed to have its staff know what they were about and how to support each other. The students like any child needed a known and stable framework. We met and talked and debated endlessly.

I had a ball. But I also got increasingly tired and it took its toll.

I went farming for a decade. It was good for me - lots of sheep but also lots of open plains and silence.

However, eventually I found that the care of 2000 merinos was not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I opened a private counselling practice and also returned to teaching in many different forms.

I taught long term unemployed men in courses designed to improve skills and point them towards employment. They were not always willing participants.

I took month long courses with recently retrenched workers from closed and closing factories. Some had worked there most of their lives. Suddenly they were out of employment and the lives they had previously lived. It was my job to try and get them thinking of chances and possible opportunities and to help them grieve and be upset.

I toured rural Victorian schools running day long courses for year twelve students stressing life and study skills 

I ran courses for larger corporates such as Westpac and Toyota and for government organisations like the CFA and local nursing homes.

It was both exhausting but also exciting. I created course after course to meet the perceived needs. In retrospect I don’t think the courses for the unemployed delivered what was hoped.

We had fun. We did suggest and challenge and try to rattle cages but in many cases a mixture of anger, sadness and entrenched beliefs meant that very few moved to find employment or even entertain the thought that they might. My efforts to suggest and encourage that there might be lives beyond where they were was limited in its success.

I did this for about ten years and was getting tired again when quite out of the blue two local government schools rang me to offer employment. Apparently, I had gained a reputation that I was competent with disengaged students and with the advent of VCAL suddenly schools were faced with the daunting prospect of teaching a key component called Personal Development. I had developed the skills to teach that through my previous work.

I chose Sebastopol because they offered not only the chance to teach VCAL to reluctant boys but also to use my counselling skills in an informal way with senior students. It fitted me well and the school has supported me well in what I do for twenty years.

Teaching with a very accomplished VCAL staff team was terrific. In some ways it was a little like being back at the Community school. About 100 or so students and a staff of seven who saw themselves as a unit dedicated to meeting the needs of this group. We had a cohort of lovely kids who were not academically inclined, who were ambivalent about school and authority (Hate classes! Love me mates and sport. Want an apprenticeship.) and were willing to be engaged if you listened and were willing to respond and show respect.

Some still required work.

I had one class that even after six weeks of my undoubted charm and skill were still rebellious and chaotic. It was more crowd control then teaching. But then it turned. They became quiet, attentive and even productive. I didn’t question it, just thanked the gods and continued. I found out later that one of the much admired and respected older lads had decided I was ‘the goods’ and proceeded to give them a very stern motivational talk along the lines of:
“He’s ok. Give him a go. Shut up or there will be trouble.”

They shut up. They became engaged. They started to not want to miss the class and I moved from extreme anxiety to looking forward to seeing them. We had a great year.

An added bonus was that they stopped insulting and mocking each other to actually being respectful and even protective. One of our lads fancied himself as a singer and so at the end of every double module, if he had been attentive then the class gave him permission to serenade us with truly awful falsetto renditions of popular songs. No-one laughed. No-one jeered. He was one of ‘us’. So. Let him sing.

What a great outcome!

I was lucky as a young English teacher to be taught by two exceptional mentors. One was Gerry Tickell at Swinburne and the other was Bernard Newsome at Course ‘B’ Melbourne University Education. Both were masters of their craft, fine men and gifted teachers.

Their messages were similar even if couched in different ways. Start from where the student is. Engage them in their life experiences. Value those. Expose them to great literature and themes that run through them, get them writing and don’t worry too much about formal punctuation, grammar and spelling in the early stages. That would come but get them to enjoy the act of expression. Then you could correct, modify and suggest but from that base of enjoyment and success. Ease on the red biro and then engage at the levels of content and process. Gerry was kind enough to ‘lend’ me his senior writing group and this class of eager, intelligent and committed students was a delight. Several actually won major writing prizes while still students.

At the other end of that spectrum were achievements that were of similar value and worth, while not being of the same literary standard.

Students who previously had never taken writing seriously or been taken seriously themselves gleaned that they were being listened to and supported. They took a plunge and began writing - pages of it.

I am sure that as a teacher I am no stranger to the student who suddenly appears with a huge grin and a manuscript of quite mammoth proportions - 30 to 60 pages of ‘Lord of the Rings’ meets ‘Hunger Games’ meets “Night of the Living Dead” as a multitude of characters with unpronounceable names and seemingly little motivation hacked and disembowelled and beheaded a vast array of very bad people while saving kingdoms and rescuing victims.

This without a semblance of punctuation or grammar or spelling.

Solid page after page after page. Not a break to be seen.

Dragons, dwarfs, fairy godmothers, angels, demons, gargoyles, vampires, wicked goblins - from the pyramids to Alaska to outer space - all got a guernsey.

And this was not to be taken lightly. What I had was a huge success and I had to tread carefully in my response. No. It would not be picked up by Penguin or Pan McMillan and become an overnight success but this was an outpouring that had been much cared about that was worthy of due care.

So we would talk plot and motivation while slowly introducing the full stop, the capital letter and even the paragraph while holding back on the comma and apostrophe. As Gerry Tickell once simply explained to a writing group:
“The purpose of punctation is not to inflict pain but to help the reader understand what you have written.

”Yep. Spot on!"

Not all teaching is miracle conversions and epiphanies. Much of it is persistence - you turn up regularly. You stay with the processes that you know work even if the results aren’t immediate. You take suggestion and criticism. You don’t shirk the hard conversations with disengaged kids. You hold fast to the simple maxim that it is your classroom. You protect that space and what goes on there because it is only if you do that then kids can feel safe and secure and learn. You become a team player who supports and aids your colleagues because without them you can do little and have a hard life.

As one of my mentors said to me “You hold the space because if you don’t then you are creating the chance for different things to happen and not all are useful."

You do that because the school and the students ask that you hold that safe space for them. It is your job.

And I want to stress that there may be challenging classes and students but mostly students do want to be there, are respectful and are willing to be engaged in their learning. Then teaching becomes a delight as you are privileged to be invited into student lives to both teach content and process as well as offering other help where you can.

There are so many students and so many memories and so I will choose but two. One was a student inspired epiphany and the other was a heart stopping moment.
The first occurred on a day I had an extra with a younger group who I did not know. A verbal altercation developed in the back of the class that was unusual. One of the protagonists who was calling out insults had his back to me as he swivelled in his chair. I put a hand on his shoulder and quietly asked him to slow it down a tad. He turned and screamed at me:
“Don’t you f*** ing touch me. I will sue you. Hands off.”

I was shocked. I did wonder what to do or say. I could have had him removed or yelled at him.

Luckily, some of my counsellor training and practice came to the rescue.

I waited a moment and then went up to him and quite publicly apologised for touching him. I acknowledged my error and asked him to let it go if he wished.

He looked amazed and then nodded.

That same boy over the next six months sought me out. We began just exchanging pleasantries and then found we both had a genuine interest in the Vietnam war. So we chatted. I lent him books such as Michael Herr’s ‘Despatches’ and we chatted some more. I have followed his career in the army and he has regularly sent greetings back.

A teacher apology! Something there!

The second involved a rare moment of terror. No. Not schoolyard fracas or social media inspired violence but a rural excursion and barbeque to celebrate a year with a group of VCAL students.

I knew a bush place called the Devil’s Kitchen where there is bush and creeks and small cliffs. A place of Nankeen Kestrels and Wedge tailed Eagles. A lovely spot. Cook the barbeque. Sit about. Bit of exploring but a basic relax.

Two students helped me unload and set up. Then went to call in the other twelve. Funny. Not there! In fact they couldn’t be seen anywhere. It was as if they had vanished. I didn’t panic straight away. They had to be just close by and so I despatched my two faithful helpers to just climb some small hills to look and then summon them.

Not a sign of!  They were looking anxious. I was trying not to.

We sat.

We waited. “Picnic at Hanging Rock” suddenly swept into my mind uncalled for.

I kept reassuring myself.

“You can’t just lose students. It is not possible.”

Of course, they turned up or else I would not be still Department employed and would be living in a small hut on the West coast of Tasmania while gathering periwinkles.

They had found a cave. No really it was a tunnel. Part of an ancient gold mine and being ‘hands on’ inquisitive students who had been Personally Developed, they had explored.

Probably they went in about a kilometre. I was too relieved to even reprimand them.

I felt suddenly very tired. I sat while the crew cooked the barbeque, cleaned up and escorted me to the bus.

There are a lot of old abandoned mines in the Ballarat region.

I teach all kids and try to not favour too much the kids I like but mostly I have seemed to have spent a lot of my energy with the kids who didn’t love school a lot. I found and still find some considerable joy in having adult conversations with them that seems to engage them back into education in a much more real way. They don’t have to keep bucking the system. We seem to understand each other and I am never insensitive enough to try and talk down to them or try to pull rank. They do tend to be the ones who still stop me in the street to chat.

Funny about that!

It began at Swinburne where the school encouraged me to try and engage a group of gang boys who really just hung about not doing much. I didn’t get them to a lot of classes but I did suit up a few times to convince judges not to incarcerate them and mostly the judiciary agreed with me that it was not a useful option. Most of them turned out to be very reasonable members of the society.

One of them tracked me down years later and brought trees to plant on my farm as his way of showing his thanks.

As a final note of something that resembles advice, I would like to caution that to be a good teacher, it helps if you like kids. If you don’t, they suss it quickly and can then proceed to make life difficult. You need to engage with kids - learn names, pets, footy teams, cars, backgrounds and you need to know something about what you teach. You need content and you need process. I listen a lot to young people and I love books, writing and reading. They have stood me in good stead.

So. Why teach?

It’s never dull.

It is always challenging.

There will always be:
Kids who have just argued with dad at breakfast

Kids who have been away for two weeks and have left their books and laptop at home.

Kids who have just broken up from their three-week, long-term relationship and are heartbroken. With this will come half a dozen friends who couldn’t possibly go to class and leave their grieving friend

Kids who haven’t eaten yet.

Kids who have had enough and want to leave school that very minute.

Kids who want a chat and not much else.

And to stress…

Kids who value you as a caring adult in their lives.

Kids who will stop you in the street and wish to engage, years after you taught them.

Kids who will surprise and delight you by showering you with gifts at the end of a year’s work.

All this and you will need to teach them as well. And teaching is about finding ways to engage with students so that you can present them with material that you have researched, tailored for your classes and practised how to present. You have to know your stuff. There is no way around that. The first few years of teaching are challenging as you develop your own materials, learn your ways of delivery and class management, but this is very doable and particularly if you are willing to pick the brains of the established staff in your school.

You will have rolls, exams, reports, meetings, staff assessments, VIT registrations, parent contacts and much, much more.

In my case, as I have already said, you will also be greeted by a veritable horde of ex-students as I make my way through the streets of my town.

There is huge joy in having worked with a group of students and seen the growth in them both academically and personally. That is at the very core of the profession.

And… as they say - the holidays are great. And … you will need them.

What are you waiting for?

Be a teacher.

Accept the challenge. Have a great life.

You may even be respected, admired and feel worthwhile.

Good luck with it.