On heroes
Is it any surprise that teachers are fighting for recognition while saviourism dominates?
I feel like such an edu-Grinch saying writing this piece, but I’m still thinking about the woman who drove around the neighbourhood reading to her students during COVID-19 in 2020. No, I haven’t been thinking about this for the entirety of the past two years, but it pops into my head fairly often. It’s as though she’s regularly visiting me in my driveway, reading that book aloud. You know the one where the heroic teacher sacrifices themselves, tirelessly practising three pointers, rehearing unique handshakes into the early hours of the morning, recording endless hours of YouTube content?
I noticed that one of the recommendations of the recent review into initial teacher education was to improve the status of teaching through accolades and awards for extreme service. This trend for honouring heroism and ‘inspo’ concerns me. It’s apparently not enough to do a really decent job every day, so I do worry that counter to improving the status of teaching, moves like this will actually give graduates unrealistic expectations of what they can and should be doing.
The review actually promotes the idea of nominating more teachers for the Order of Australia medal. While there is nothing inherently bad about this idea, I can’t see how someone would be nominated without perpetuating the hero model. It seems that other industries can reward their practitioners without the need for these seductive narratives. Can you imagine your accountant needing to film herself nailing negative gearing and uploading it to Tiktok to get the professional recognition she deserves?
Highly Accomplished and Lead Teachers should be the natural answer to promoting solid best-practice without the expectation of saviourism. The report does highlight the need to increase the numbers of these excellent practitioners but is light on recognition that the process itself is burdensome, with applicants jumping through ongoing hoops to be accredited. These hoops simply don’t exist for many other professions. This might also explain why so many quality teachers are promoted out of the classroom, a far less onerous prospect than an additional layer of accreditation admin.
Two more ‘teacher competitions’ have crossed my inbox this week, the Commonwealth Bank Teacher Awards and the Cambridge Dedicated Teacher Awards. They both carry the language of inspiration and even the idea of ‘befriending’ students. It seems that being professional is not enough, it’s of insufficient merit for teaching to be rewarded and seen as rewarding. Fronting up and teaching reasonably well each and every day should be enough. But having high expectations, routines, giving direct instruction and encouraging deliberate practice don’t lend themselves too well to Michelle Pfeiffer-inspired narratives.
The viral affirmation of sacrifice and dedication, seen through creating treats like 1984-inspired Victory chocolate and Crucible cake (whatever that is) for students has the effect of deprofessionalising our workforce and diminishing what we are actually paid to do. I do think the world needs heroes but I’m not sure that heroes in teaching are ultimately helpful or realistic. I’m certain that the world is made better by our superstar teachers but I think the popular idea of charitable sacrifice might be damaging our wellbeing and our chances of retaining a stock of hardworking, capable, ordinary professionals.
Let’s normalise and reward a good day’s work in education.
This speaks to me! Doing ‘more’ in teaching should only be followed by the word ‘effective’.
Rebecca, this is such a refreshing and realistic response. Too often we see teachers burned out and over-burdened with the day to day demands of the job, without encouraging the sort of sacrifice that award winners are often acknowledged for.