Hoist on our own petard

Teachers should be encouraging teachers of the future, not putting them off, writes JOHN DIXON.

One of the really good things I get to do in my job is to work with beginning teachers and teachers in training. On the whole, they are a group of relatively young, enthusiastic and keen individuals who really want to do two things -- get a job and teach. They are passionate and proud to become teachers.

Each year the Federation conducts one-day seminars for graduate teachers at most of the relevant universities. Federation also runs beginning teacher courses as part of the trade union training program. The courses are highly successful and extremely well received by student teachers and probationary teachers.

While, on the whole, these are fantastic days, there are some increasingly disturbing trends.

One story given to me was the case of a young woman who had always wanted to be a teacher. She had received a UAI admission mark of 98 and did an honours degree in science, majoring in physics. She then undertook the masters of teaching course at Sydney University, which is a two-year post-graduate course. She completed her course requirements with flying colours, including her initial practicum studies. She had one part of the course to complete her teacher training -- her intensive internship at a metropolitan high school. Within two days she was back at the university sobbing in the office of her university lecturer, thinking of chucking it all away.

Why? Basically, because every teacher in the staff room had told her, in one form or another, in a 36 hour period, that she looked like a "bright girl" and should get out while she could.

When I have told this story to more experienced teachers, they have either laughed the nervous laugh of acknowledgment of an uncomfortable truth or said, "Yeah, I would have done the same."

I can empathise with both sides on this increasingly wide divide. I don't have the answers but I know that if the division continues, we are helping to destroy a system many of us have spent the majority of working lives passionately defending and championing.

The other factor many teachers of my generation forget is that we were paid to go to university. We had to give a commitment to go anywhere in the state and many of us took pseudo-industrial action against the Department about the inadequacies of our fortnightly paltry scholarships. However, this generation of teachers are paying large amounts of HECS without any guarantee of a teaching job in the public education system. I wonder how many of "us" would have done the same.

I was reminded of this the other day when a colleague of mine told me that it was a wonderful day in his life. After 10 years of teaching, he had just paid his last HECS payment. He had been paying around $120 per fortnight for over a decade.

Another emerging trend is the lack of experienced teachers in public schools wanting to take student teachers for their prac or internships. Practicum co-ordinators in the education faculties are reporting to me that, increasingly, the private schools are taking up the bulk of the shortfall.

Of a recent final group of graduating students at a major teaching university, 75 per cent had done the majority of the 'pracs' in private schools and more than half had done their internships in private schools. There were two main reasons for this.

Some public school teachers had been unwilling to take them on and many of the graduates felt their chances for immediate employment would be enhanced by working in private schools.

Add to this the increasing reality that university is out of reach of working class kids and more of the student teachers are products of the private school themselves. They went to private school, prac taught mostly in private schools and probably will naturally teach in these schools.

The other day one of the teachers in a high school in my area phoned me to complain that there were no casual or temporary teachers to cover their long service leave. There is a lesson to be drawn here.

John Dixon is the Membership Officer/Organiser.

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