When I was starting out as a teacher, just over a decade ago, I knew that only half of my new colleagues would stick with it for five years. It felt like a white-knuckled ride on a roller-coaster in those early days, as I worried about whether I could beat those odds. New teachers are still struggling, according to a recent survey by the Australian Education Union, “with 39 per cent planning to leave the profession within a decade”.
A few weeks ago, I was in the staff room with a few other teachers who had clocked up multiple decades, and we were musing about why and how we were still in the profession. My job is to teach my students, but I learn from them as well. One of my colleagues who worked for four decades then retired, but still regularly pops in for contract and casual teaching roles, said that teaching was her “fountain of youth”.
By working with young people, she kept up with trends and was feeling spritely. As proof, she wiggled her legs out from under the table and showed us vibrant purple stockings that matched her scarf. Teaching has been invigorating for me as well, but in a different way.
For me, it is a career that has allowed me to be my true self, a privilege I never experienced in previous jobs. In a classroom with teenagers, there are no coded messages, no doublespeak, no hidden meanings. What you see is what you get.
A teenager is in a state of becoming, and in that state, they are completely, and beautifully, authentic. I never have to guess wh.