Go Dr Peter Lind, Mr Director, sir- of the Teacher’s Council…. Did you read your copy of the, ‘for teachers 06 mo nga kaiwhakaako’ magazine, mailed to your home this spring?
Not that I’m usually an avid reader of such educational mags but something did catch my eye.
Those three priorities laid out:
1/ Attract, Recruit and Retain good teachers
2/ Develop strong professional norms
3/ incentives and organisational conditions to support teachers.
You achieve those things and you’ve cracked the code. The answer is no longer 42 its that written above. You’re a genius!
One teeny weeny question, it is but just one word with the power, perhaps of a thousand spanners. How?
1/ Attract, Recriut, and Retain
For far too long teaching has been classified as a vocation. Vocations are cheap, people with vocations are not motivated by money, their motivated by passion. Passion and an ideology which the bureaucratic bulldozer that is the teaching profession can squash and quash in the blink of an eye. Well maybe not the blink of an eye, perhaps three or four years. But quash none the less. Those that are motivated by money, power and the pursuit of all things flash are not going to choose teaching, it’s a thankless job compared to a doctors. And it pays a pittance compared to a lawyer. It is not fixed with money, I say, it is fixed with freedom. A freedom to challenge your students in the way that you choose. If I’m into technology or Literacy let me empower them with my passions and I leave the Te Reo, Music and Art for when they are in Miss Jones’ class because she loves those things. I’m going to stick around in teaching if I get the chance to keep the passion, and have my ideology encouraged and moulded But then there is number 2….
2/ Develop strong professional norms
How then does overarching administration ensure strong professional norms. Prehaps the safest way is to identify a ‘safe teacher’ –professionally speaking and have a word with that cloning company.
I venture that it appears iffy at best and down right crazy at worst to allow teachers to do their jobs without strict and restrictive legislation.
This is not, should not be ‘teaching by numbers’. It takes a passion to set the fire of learning.
But I hear, as I heard the other day, teaching is a team effort, there needs to be consistency across the board…. There is no ‘I’ in the word ‘TEAM’. I say every team is made of I’s. It’s the job of senior management to encourage that Individuality in their school so that the learners are passionate about learning.
3/ incentives and organisational conditions to support teachers
That sounds like a career path to me. But I have not witnessed that here in
New Zealand. There appears to be not institutional encouragement for career progression. Once or twice I’ve seen a principal take a particular professional liking to an individual and bestow upon them opportunities within the school to further their advancement. But on the whole if you don’t mark out a career path for yourself nobody is going to do it for you. No grant for further study, no sabbatical while you finish a post grad. You want it, you do it yourself. Thank you very much.
Holy Grail those three are. Good Luck, Dr Lind.
