A talented teacher changes trajectories, changes lives. Such teachers fill the minds of their students with curiosity and wonder, and allow young people to achieve something they never believed possible.
Most of us have had one of those, someone they can credit for the fortune — material or otherwise — they have today.
For High Court Judge Ian Callinan, it was James Blair, who taught him in his final year at a Brisbane public primary school.
“Mr Blair did not accept pre-ordination of futures,” he wrote in My Favourite Teacher, a 2011 book edited by Robert Macklin in which high-profile Australians shared recollections of the teachers who inspired them. “He raised children beyond their expectations.”
Callinan’s High Court colleague Michael Kirby struggled with maths. “I just didn’t get the hang of it,” he said. That was until a young teacher named Jim Coroneos turned up at Fort Street Boys’ High School in Sydney. “Suddenly the penny dropped. As if by magic, I began to understand algebra and even trigonometry.”
While MP Tanya Plibersek couldn’t pick a favourite individual teacher, she did praise a certain type of teacher: “The one whose enthusiasm was catching, who knew their stuff and loved their subject and passed onto me a lifelong interest in the material we studied together.” One of those was her art teacher, Diana Lewis.
I could go on. In my case it was a maths teacher who convinced me — and my parents too — that university, a long way from home, was a real option.
But we all have a story like that. And it comes down to impact: the power to change a future for the better. That’s the narrative that needs to be the focus of this rough-and-ready plan to revamp teacher training to deal with a nationwide shortage of educators, one that now sits at a crisis point.
It offers a wonderful opportunity for the Albanese government, but indicators of how it might do this should already be setting off alarm bells.
This crisis in numbers might be fixed by stuffing classrooms full of anybody who can work a whiteboard. But that’s the crisis in numbers — what about the crisis in teaching? Males have left the profession in droves, and our children are suffering as a result of it. Older, experienced teachers have been driven out by the technology that underpinned education through COVID lockdowns.
Some classrooms have made use of second-year university students, on a temporary basis, to plug shortfalls. Others have grown in size in the belief that some education is better than none at all.
In too many schools, children are being fed breakfast not available at home. In others, students don’t turn up and no one in authority asks why. The inequity that bubbled along before COVID now stands out as a marker for the cohorts that will lead the nation later.
This crisis in numbers needs to be explored through an analysis of why people like Diana Lewis, Jim Coroneos and James Blair might not be choosing teaching, and how we might fix that.
The mental health legacy left by COVID, now responsible for an upsurge in self-harm, eating disorders, anxiety and even school refusal, demands that too.
Increasing teachers’ pay packets to make them commensurate with the impact they have on lives is a start. So is disrupting how classes are taught to bring back wonder and curiosity and learning for information — not just for assessment.
Giving school principals a seat at the decision-making table is a prerequisite. When will any government start to value those with decades of information to offer?
Perhaps we need a system where the HECS debt of teachers is wiped. Perhaps we need to focus on those skills that travel beyond grammar and maths, to capture those who have that uncanny ability to rewrite someone’s future.
Four-day weeks? Public housing for those willing to teach in rural and remote areas? An annual bonus for people who can capture the imagination of those sitting in front of them?
Whatever the way ahead, Anthony Albanese is being offered a chance to change the delivery of education in Australia in a way his predecessors have failed. And a good start would be to listen to the experience of his colleague Tanya Plibersek and flip this narrative so we are filling our classrooms with a certain type of teacher: those whose expertise centres around inspiration as much as calculus.
What attributes does a great teacher need? And what do you recall about the teacher who inspired you? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
