I cannot remember my early teaching days being as frenetic in pace as now experienced by teachers. Marking and programming was thorough but less regimented and there was more teacher autonomy and scope for creativity with fewer deadlines enabling real engagement with texts, language and heaven forbid, even grammar. The schools of today seem driven by an Assessment heavy curriculum with teaching towards exams like NAPLAN and HSC dictating things rather than teaching for learning. For all the push in this direction, it is ironic that statisticians tell us that Australia's international educational status has dropped; certainly not due to any reduction in how hard teachers are working.
Holidays allow a time to rest but also for catching up for unfinished teaching chores and preparation for a new HSC cohort and no doubt a new round of changes imposed from above to this, that and the other.New Scheme teachers seem unnecessarily overloaded with time consuming paperwork along with the eternal round of marking, programming and reworking assessment tasks. Perennial arguments regarding single or mixed sex classes, graded versus ungraded, set rather than flexible texts raise are voiced with little attention paid to the anecdotal experience or wishes of teachers themselves. Whatever form the New Curriculum actually takes, it can only be hoped that it will usher in productive change that will benefit students and teachers alike rather than the bureaucrats.
The Holidays beckon and every teacher in the state and across the country will breathe a collective sigh of thanks once that Friday night arrives.
"The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires
his listener with the wish to teach himself." Edward Bulwer-Lytton
