“We can’t tiptoe around behaviour, because what they (schools) permit – they promote.” This was said by a blogger.
When you say this type of thing, I agree “in part” every time. I agree that everyone should be held accountable for their behaviour and for their jobs etc, but schools only hold parents and children accountable – it’s never holding the district or the education department accountable for their part – or rather – for screwing up the whole education system.
Just because “that’s the way you’ve always done it” is the education departments motto – doesn’t mean you need to follow their lead or continue their bullshit.
In Victoria at the moment, teachers are striking due to pay disputes and the inequality between teachers pay between the different states… which I also agree with – because it should be the same pay across the board – you do the same job whether you live in NSW, or VIC, or SA – the pay should be the same. But….. I do also agree that the NT has trouble attracting teachers and any other degree qualified workers for that matter – and so the only thing that has worked is incentivising moving there (so there’s nuance and context needed). But I’m not talking about accountability for pay at the moment, I’m talking about accountability for your safety, and for your ability to actually teach.
The school system is so damned outdated and irrelevant – and yet the only accountability that teachers talk about in the media – is behaviour of students and parents, and what pay they should be getting. And yet – by making the school system accountable for change (real change, not the ‘lack of anything’ that they are doing currently – which is called lip service and shuffling things around) – you could change that one thing you dread most. Bad behaviour is classes.
Read my other blogs and you’ll see there’s a theme…. That if you make the universities and Education Departments accountable for actually teaching a new way of delivering learning and education in a whole new school system (overhaul the whole system and make something totally new) – you’d fix all your problems at once. But instead, you look for a bandaid of “let’s just double down on behaviourism”. Pay is important, especially with the cost of living being out of control now. Wouldn’t you prefer – equal pay (to start with)… AND an easier job???? One where you actually get to teach and love your job instead of constantly dealing with ‘behaviour’ of your administration, the children and the parents?????
Keep reading my blogs and you’ll find out how this is possible. But if you want to continue with the bandaids and the aggression/ violence and things being called ‘inclusion’ when they are no such thing – keep doing what you are doing. Keep beating your head against that non-changing brick wall and keep doing things the way they’ve always been done… and continue bitching and blaming everything and everyone – but never actually affecting any progress or valuable/real change.
You – as a highly regulated, unionised (in Australia and some other countries), and NEEDED group of people- have the power in your hands to do something – to really affect that change… if you came together and actually listened to people like me and the disabled community – you could get the best job in the world – where you really have 12 weeks off a year and really get to enjoy your job.
The strikes are currently asking for (there may be more, but these are the main requests):
1. Significant Pay Increases: The Australian Education Union (AEU) pushed for an approximately 35% pay bump over four years to catch up with cost-of-living increases and overtake the salaries offered in New South Wales.t
2. Workload Relief: Teachers have demanded tangible caps on face-to-face teaching hours, additional dedicated planning time to manage administrative burdens, and better support for handling complex student behaviours in the classroom.
3. Fair Pay for Education Support (ES) Staff: ES workers have sought better recognition and substantive pay increases to ensure equal treatment compared to teaching staff.
4. Systemic Public School Funding: Protesters demanded that the state government bridge the funding gap to ensure Victorian public schools are fully funded to the minimum standard, as per agreements with the Commonwealth
Now let’s break this down – yes – schools and teachers need fair pay and proper funding – so let’s ignore 1, 3 and 4… Let’s focus on 2 – which is actually the one that needs to be focussed on and properly dissected to effect real change and appropriate/ safe working conditions.
2. Workload Relief: Teachers have demanded tangible caps on face-to-face teaching hours, additional dedicated planning time to manage administrative burdens, and better support for handling complex student behaviours in the classroom.
· Caps on face to face: at the moment – teachers are supposed to get 30 minutes break – away from kids and work. But many don’t receive this – this is really really wrong. This violates employments laws across the country. They are not getting this time, mostly due to administration requiring them to do lunch/recess duty etc. This IMO should be covered by administration staff that do not also teach classes (by people who have the time to take a break during class time instead of scheduled ‘lunch times’, or by additional paid staff for these types of activities.
It is not fair to make teachers or anyone work through and not get a break – this causes burnout and escalates dysregulation, mental health issues and causes physical exhaustion. I’ve worked in both teaching and other professions (like retail) where specifically managers are not allowed to have a break – as they are the only manager on site. This violates laws and should never occur – but it does.
We should never put up with this kind of abuse. Once we do, we set a precedence of acceptance and for more abuse to follow. So I totally agree with teachers fighting back on this one.
But…. I want to point out that some teachers do this to themselves (not all – but some). When a teacher says to a student “do it now or do it at recess” they are self punishing and also self-violating those employment laws – for both themselves and the student. Both the student and the teacher has that right to a break. By not getting that break – you are causing more dysregulation for both parties. Stop it – I beg you! Stop harming yourself in order to give petty punishments to students. They don’t work, and they harm all involved, just stop it.
· Additional dedicated planning time to manage administrative burdens
This is an important one that I’ve been advocating for forever. Teachers are never given time to get to know their students. It’s one of the biggest barriers to achieving ‘good behaviour’ in the classroom – and yet no time at all is dedicated to it. It’s a total fallacy (enshitification) that teachers only need time for planning and administration – the biggest one they need time for is getting to know the people that they are supposed to teach – without knowing anything about them, their abilities, their struggles or anything else. It’s the dumbest thing in education.
Yes – they need time for planning and marking and whatever else. But time for relationship building is never the thing that is asked for… why?????
I think it’s because that’s the focus that administrators have and therefore they want what they want – not what teachers or students or parents want. Their stubborn stupid fixation on paperwork over actual learning through relationship building is the industry’s biggest problem.
When you build relationships, you build trust, respect and mutual like- and you can’t learn from someone you don’t trust/ like or respect. Respect is NOT built through behaviour modification and reward charts – that actually destroys trust, liking and especially respect. And yet that’s what administrators push on teachers. Teachers can’t teach if they don’t know their students and their students don’t have a relationship with them.
The students are showing you with bad behaviour that you don’t know them, that they don’t trust/possibly like you/ or respect you. That’s what the fight/flight/flex/flop/fawn/freeze responses to trauma are – they are a nervous system response steeped in distrust, unsafe people and working environments and everyday trauma from not having those things in the place that you spend the majority of your time.
Think about it. If you were a stay at home parent, and all day every day – your partner gave you rewards for doing their bidding, or punished you for showing any sort of dislike or inability to do something, or not wanting to do something – you’d have severe cPTSD and trauma. That’s what rewards and punishments do in schools or in workplaces where the person spends the majority of their days. They create toxic places where your only option is to shutdown or meltdown. And that’s what you are seeing. An unsafe workplace (a school) where the students don’t feel safe, secure, liked or respected. When you reward or punish someone – you are showing extreme disrespect to them… so they’ll return it in spades. This leads me to the last request in the teachers second demand:
· better support for handling complex student behaviours in the classroom.
What teachers (IMO) think they are asking for – is more power to punish or to control, or to expel students who are showing those complex ‘bad’ behaviours. Which has already been proven to NOT work – and to cause a deepening of those behaviours. It’s proven in the continued ‘bad’ behaviour -and in the increase of those behaviours over the whole country. Stop asking for more of what isn’t working.
What they should be asking for is what I wrote above. For more time to get to know the students, and more time to build relationships at the start of the year – or change the whole system so that kids are broken into ability level instead of age levels, and interests (so the children get to see more of the teachers that work well for them, and more actual time doing things that matter to them/ interest them etc etc etc).
When you have a strong relationship with someone – you don’t act like an ass to them (this goes both ways – teachers to students and vice versa). You gain mutual trust and respect. You don’t act with trauma responses because you’ve built that trust and respect – SAFETY into the relationship.
This can be taught to teachers. Dr Ross Greene has adapted his CPS program (Collaborative Proactive solutions) for use in the classroom and does training for schools on this. You can also learn from people like me, or other ‘properly’ trauma informed neuroaffirming educators.
NOTE: I use ‘properly’ in inverted commas because many will say they are trauma informed or trained – but they aren’t. If they are PBS or ABA providers or techs – they are NOT trauma informed. PBS and ABA can never be trauma informed, because something that causes PTSD, trauma and suicide ideation can never actually BE trauma informed. They may ‘say’ it is – but many in the autistic community rejects it - in all forms – if any community rejects something because it harms that specific community – then that thing can never be ‘trauma informed’. Sticking your own label on something doesn’t make it so. Having a few from a community say it’s ‘trauma informed’ does not override or negate the rest of the community and their experiences or their word. Even if one person says that they were harmed by something – then it’s not ‘trauma informed’ by the very definition of ‘trauma informed’. To be ‘trauma informed’ it has to prove that it does NO HARM to ANYONE!!!!!
Ø So – let’s hold the education department and the universities accountable for this shit show, and ask for things that actually effect change that helps all people – not just a few, and not as a band aid, as we have in the past and continue to do now.
If you do this – you’ll have the backing of everyone. At the moment I see teachers being disillusioned and truly upset by all people not being behind their latest strike. But that’s because you haven’t taken on board what everyone needs and wants – just what teachers want. If you looked outside yourselves and listened to those around you – you’d see that those giving you advice (like I am) are actually trying to help you, to help you to have a wonderful career and to be paid fairly… but not at the expense of our kids. And that’s the problem most see in the current strikes – they don’t benefit the children as much as they should – in fact number ‘2’ demand; is not specific enough and actually looks to be of detriment to the kids from the outside looking in.
Yes – demands 2 and 4 are for the children – but not in the right ways, in neuroaffirming and positive change ways, not in the ways that will actually help students to feel safe and stop ‘bad’ behaviour. Or to help them to learn or help them to succeed or be able in schools.
I will also add that many people aren’t behind the strikes because of perceived privilege. For example: the OT’s association has asked for more pay – while disabled people are losing all access to the NDIS and to vital supports. This is seen as blind ignorant privilege. Teachers striking, when this is happening can be seen by teachers as having nothing to do with each other…. But I assure you, that’s not how the disabled community see it. We are not begrudging you a pay rise – the community is more wanting you to get that payrise, and for schools to be funded properly – but for you to recognise the privilege you have, but the help you deny to us.
Many in the disabled community were forced into homeschooling – forced into giving up livelihoods and jobs to stay at home with kids, because the school system utterly failed them but also destroyed them in the process. And I’m not just talking about the kids – I’m talking about the parents. The system destroys parents just as equally as it destroys students. But teachers are only asking for support to manage behaviours – which is why those people were forced out in the first place.
PBS and behaviour modification methods are one of the main reasons that disabled students can’t attend mainstream schooling – and yet schools/ administrators/ governments all want more of it. Not less of trauma and less of harm – but more of it. The government is now shifting more of that onto schools – onto teachers without changing that system, and they are removing the things that were helping – like Speech, OT, physio and psych services for those kids. It’s about to be even worse in your schools. Those behaviours are about to be astronomical – IF you don’t listen, IF you don’t learn – IF you don’t change and hold the education department and the government accountable. Do it now – you’ve already decided to say no to the pitiful pay rise you were offered – so change your demands – and force it back on them.