One of two this week alone, she will also be off Thursday. She is Year 12 doing internals and headed towards important exams, and it is stressful for her and her friends to again be told to stay home.
Many of her teachers are over it too, they’re aware students are falling behind or having to rejig too much work and scheduling, many of them are getting as stressed as the students are. Some have expressed disappointment that the Unionised teachers are still rejecting the offers made.
They want it settled, the school wants it settled, the students want it settled.
It also comes at a time when we have record absenteeism and we are begging kids to attend school. We’re trying to reiterate the importance of school and a good education, and there is messaging coming from all quarters on how to keep kids in school and focused on achievement. So the timing could not be worse to have teachers stopping work endlessly; and I say endlessly because it sure feels like it.
And that’s before we get to all the days off currently by kids and teachers coming down with winter bugs.
There’s a lot of sickness around in Term 2, always, but particularly this winter off the back of lockdowns and Covid. And given we are in June, we are running out of days left before school holidays start in just 3 weeks. It’s been a very disruptive term already.
For parents this is a quandary. On the one hand, we want our kids in school, we want them learning, we want them going where we’ve paid for them to be and actually getting to know some stuff, and working towards grades that will impact their futures. We also want routine for our families, structure, consistency and kids not thinking that only going to school for 3 days a week is normal or acceptable.
But we support teachers; who doesn’t? Anyone whose put their kids through school knows how hard many of them (not all) work, and how much of an impact they can have on your child’s life. It's a critical role and I feel badly for how much extra teachers have to take on these days in the form of bureaucracy and admin and social work, and dealing with a whole bunch of stuff they shouldn’t have to deal with.
It sucks.
But it’s also part of what you must know you’re signing up for. We’ve got a young doctor in training in our family, and we’ve talked to her endlessly about the 80-90 hour weeks and the burnout and the stress and all the headaches that being a young doctor in this country entails, and she says she knows all that going in. Do the striking teachers go into teaching expecting it will be something different to what it is?
That’s not to say they shouldn’t advocate for change and look to evolve it, god only knows the whole school system needs evolving and upgrading, but at what point do you exhaust community support and erode the respect of your students by just permanently striking?
The Primary teachers just accepted their fourth offer from the Ministry of Education after “a long negotiation campaign which included the largest education strike in this country's history”, it was reported. The teachers in that dispute pointed out how much work demands have skyrocketed for them, and I don’t doubt it. But the line that they’re striking ‘for the children’ is starting to wear a bit thin when it’s the children who are suffering now with so many days off.
Kate Hawkesby is a political broadcaster on Newstalk ZB - her articles can be seen HERE.
2 comments:
But it isn't a strike at all. Typical wishy-washy teachers, claim it is a strike but make sure you do enough to still get paid while having an easy day. Then wonder why the public don't support them.
The government should just shut the schools down and use the staff salaries (hard to call them teachers when our children fail) to support families for the day. Once money was taken from pockets things would change quickly and their Clayton's moral compass would be swiftly reset.
We are experiencing catastrophic academic failure in our schools because of having adopted ineffective socialist and psychological ideas and methods many decades ago.This was not teachers' fault but that of academia and implemented by the ministry. Add to this the adherence to insane and sentimental ideas of child behaviour management. The combination of these two stupidities has made classroom teaching unrewarding and impossible with abusive and even violent students who are illiterate. and innumerate as well, particularly, in low decile schools.
NZ has got what they deserve in rubbishing traditional methods and content and being infatuated for many decades with the latest education gimmick. They ignored those who warned and predicted what is happening now..
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