Sad as it seems, I actually do think about teaching a fair bit and at the weekend, I ended up having two conversations about state vs private at my cousin's wedding. The first was with a career primary state sector teacher who has been teaching for 30 years and genuinely made me enthused about getting to teach again out here, even as a relief teacher. She really saw the benefit of what she did and mentioned a sentence that I have heard on several occasions through my training from those in the private sector- that a for a large number of state pupils, coming to school, seeing their mates and possibly even their teachers is the highlight of their day-something that, even though people moan about the quality of state school teaching, both here and at home cannot be underestimated.
The second conversation was with a younger teacher, at the same stage as me in her career, teaching secondary home economics, she had just completed a year in a state school and literally could not stop talking about how much she hated it (knowing the school, it is actually one of the nicest state schools in the area as well!) and the lack of effort and impolite nature of the pupils. She has this term started work at a very exclusive private all girls school in Brisbane and waxed lyrical about the loveliness of the pupils and how polite they were to her, nothing about the quality of their work or their creativity, just how they were so polite and called her 'girlfriend'.Strange but each to their own I guess!
Whilst there are areas of the damning article on state schools I agreed with- one that comes to mind is the BTEC system. A good friend, a Science teacher and PHD holder is a wonderful practitioner and has the god given ability to make any element of the subject engaging and he has admitted that teaching the BTEC has sucked away his soul a little as pupils leave with the equivalent of 5 GCSEs but know very little about the subject he loves to teach and although I do not teach BTEC, I can appreciate his notions!-I feel that many/most state schools do their utmost to ensure that pupils achieve and have skills to help them in the real world and this extends to Australia where the divide between state and private is less obvious but it could be said has just as a definitive outcome on the successes of pupils. Even a school that would be considered a tidy state school would be fee paying over here and as such, it really does marginalise the pupils who just attend a state school, even though the teaching is, from what I have seen, good quality and the processes in place for the pupils very good and supportive.
After these two conversations, I realised that I would miss the banter, joys and the difficulties of state schools if I was to leave that arena and I would hope that as my practice progresses, every pupils will be polite to me, at least to my face!haha.It was lovely to see how enthused teachers can still be after seeing a fair number over here who although were delivering good lessons, sometimes did not seem the happiest with their jobs as a whole!
I really hope that after 30 years in the state system that I still carry the enthusiasm and poignancy of what I do on a day to day basis as much as the teacher I met at the weekend, or at least some of it!
Hopefully some relief work will come up for in the near future, else I am going to be applying to jobs for when I get back before I get work here again!Just to note that the jobs that I have applied for now extend to receptionist, librarian, admin assistant and sports marketing rep.It's all good!Hope everyone is well and fantastic to see my colleagues getting on so well (nice work on the trip mark!)
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