The creative juices of our teachers are gone - and it’s our children that will suffer

We are not seeing creative teachers, or teachers able to teach creatively or prepare kids for 21st-century learning, because they have no ‘creative juice’ left. Photo / RNZ

OPINION: In the more than 20 years I’ve been working in the education sector I have never seen the sector so demoralised and ‘spent’.

There are a number of factors contributing to this – the least of which, I would venture, is money.

But in a sector that has struggled to be heard and can’t get the support it needs, pay rates seem to be the only hill left on which to make a stand.

As a visitor to schools and someone who works to support improved teacher practice, I have observed the exhaustion of teachers after three years of one interruption after another.

Teachers are struggling to manage and respond to learners with increasingly complex learning and social needs and feeling tremendous guilt for not being able to be there for those kids. They feel as if they are always applying a band-aid.

The effects are two-fold.

Teachers are struggling to be creative in their profession – because being creative takes energy and time.

We are not seeing creative teachers, or teachers able to teach creatively or prepare kids for 21st-century learning, because they have no ‘creative juice’ left.

In a profession that takes so much energy, one of the ways that teachers can recharge is by growing their own skills as professionals. But they need time out of the classroom to be able to do that.

We know first-hand that teachers are struggling to attend professional development because schools either don’t have the money or cannot attract suitable relievers to enable them to release their teaching staff.

It’s not only release time that’s in short supply, however. Teachers are struggling to engage in professional learning not only because it requires time to do, which they don’t have, but also because it requires the energy and headspace to do it. Teachers are simply tapped out.

So where does that leave our learners?

If we cannot provide the support our teachers need then our learners will languish.

Whenever teachers strike or attempt to talk about pay and conditions the same tired old cliches are rolled out about how many holidays teachers get or the hours they are perceived as working (as if teachers’ hours have ever been only the hours when children are at school!).

This time, can we please put aside those ill-founded views and actually listen to our teachers? They show up every day for our kids and they deserve for us to show up for them now.

* Napier-based Dr Sarah Aiono is the co-director and CEO of Longworth Education, a firm that supports primary educators wanting to implement learning through play.