Teachers are too often the unsung heroes in our community, so it was great to see them get some recognition on World Teachers Day – a day most of us would have been unaware of.
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The teaching profession is such a noble calling. Teachers lay the foundation of every community, preparing children for the future and ensuring the values we hold dear as a society are learned, honoured, upheld and passed to the following generations.
The lessons they teach are not just about formal subjects but about life itself. And, of course, teachers don’t just teach. They support, encourage and nurture, on many occasions complementing the efforts of parents raising children.
It’s been a bit of a sport over the years to dump on teachers. “They have it easy with all those holidays.” “Their work days end at 3.30pm when the bell sounds.” “They get paid too much.”
Anyone who knows a teacher also knows nothing could be further from the truth.
Teachers constantly spend time outside work hours attending to the academic and social welfare of their students. The work-life boundaries for high school teachers, for example, are now blurred by email, with students seeking help for assignments via email, very often on the weekend.
When the Higher School Certificate is being sat, it’s not only the students and their parents who are feeling anxious. Every year, dedicated teachers are fraught with nerves as their students go into the exam room. And they are often there offering reassurance when the exam is over.
Parents everywhere are well aware of the peace and quiet that descends when school resumes and all that childish clamour and drama is taken on by teachers. The noise of the school ground would test the most tolerant person yet teachers stay calm through it all.
As just as parents wake in the middle of the night worrying about their children so, too, do teachers.
Their holidays are well deserved but in reality are hardly ever true holidays. There’s marking, report writing, class preparation and professional development that often eat into that inter-term fortnight.
And teachers are always learning - if they want to equip their students to the best of their ability they have to in a world that is changing around them.
So to all our local teachers from all us at the Times, know that we highly rate the demanding job you do.