the blackboard jungle

 

In the midst of nationwide teacher shortages, university students studying teaching say they are rethinking their career choice after seeing students fight, scream and throw furniture during placements at secondary schools. As of July this year, more than 500 state school secondary teacher positions were advertised on the Victorian Education Department's website. The state government has introduced measures to boost teaching degree enrolments, recruit and retain teachers, and make regional areas more alluring. These include up to $50,000 for teachers who relocate to hard-to-staff positions, payments for teaching students to complete regional placements and making secondary teaching degrees free for people who enrol in 2024 and 2025.

 However, some university students say their mandated placements have made them realise a free degree is not worth the emotional cost of being a teacher as they see too many behavioural issues in secondary school classrooms. One teaching student said her first placement at a state secondary school made her want to drop out of her degree. "The students in class scream, throw scissors, laptops, and chairs," the placement teacher said. "Every single day I witnessed kids getting into physical fights." The university student described feeling filled with terror after students barked at her on her second day of placement. "Based on the destructive nature of the students I did not feel safe. It honestly makes me not want to be a teacher — the pay conditions do not cover what you face and I won't earn enough to be able to send my kids to a school outside the state system."

 Another first-year secondary teacher said she thought universities did not do enough to prepare future teachers for the realities of their careers. "With teacher shortages going on at the moment, I think there are a few issues that maybe aren't raised because they don't want to scare people out of the profession." She said while sexist behaviour was a mainstay in all the schools she worked in, it had worsened since she moved into a full-time role. She said universities needed to start this conversation with prospective teachers before they went into schools for placements and help them develop strategies to manage it. 

According to federal Education Minister Jason Clare at a national conference last year, only 50 per cent of students who start a teaching degree finish it. 20 per cent of those who do finish leave the profession in the first three years. Other reasons for quitting include working up to 60 hours a week, sacrificing weekends to develop lesson plans, abuse from parents & exhaustion. University of Newcastle professor of education Jenny Gore said financial incentives were not enough to solve the teacher vacancy crisis. "Most people are not motivated to teach by finances, they are motivated to make a difference." 

sources: ABC news; adelaide now