Twenty five odd years in this game has exposed me to educators who put caveats on all sorts of things along a wide continuum from reasonable and sensible to bizarre.
They are always clear about what they will and will not do and this clarity naturally sharpens, stiffens and embeds more as careers progress.
“I don’t teach grade prep. I don’t teach year seven. I only teach senior students, so don’t waste my time on the weaker, younger, less needy and developed.”
Setting boundaries and seeking the comfort of homeostasis is a very human and understandable trait.
At the chalkface, these choices and declarations are often linked with professional identities connected to specialisation and experience.
As we attain career capital through this experience, our achievements or titled progression, we have more choice about what up with we will not put.
In addition, this professional identity and status is entwined with the heirarchy myth that teacher capacity or excellence is linked somehow to how far up the year levels you go, or the age of students under your tutelage and in your care.
The flawed reasoning here asserts that final or senior year teachers are somehow superior to those who work with younger students, no doubt because the concepts are harder and the stakes higher in a school system obsessed with ranking and sorting students in readiness for life after school.
This can lead to a belief that we should feel somehow inferior for not being satisfied with where we are, particularly lower down, or that somehow our work is less impactful or important.
Well, after teaching senior classes for several years in Australia and abroad, I chose to stay in middle school, aka puberty management, or the valley of the shadow of teenage angst.
Because it is hard and not easy.
Because it can be unpredictable.
Because students are often angry, combative, sullen, inconstant and unregulated; they especially need good guides for the journey.
Because there are a lot of challenges, aside from the biological drivers, to work through or go around, over or under.
Arguably, there is no more critical period of education (defining middle school here as roughly 12 to 16 years old) due to the varied rate and timing of change within a cohort.
We meet our students at the heady transition from primary school children into high school and across four years, nurture, support and help them, often against their wishes, to become young people on the verge of high stakes education or transition into the workforce.
Some students experience only mild disruption and shockwaves in puberty, while others journey deep, deep into the valley of darkness.
A lot of people ask why I do it, and have always declared they couldn’t. For a long time I didn’t know why, but felt the curiosity and even disdain of people for my desire to not covet the teaching of older students.
Collingwood Football Club coach, Craig McRae, recently said in a press conference when asked about a player with a troubled past who had shown signs of maturing and improvement, most obviously on field but also off, the following:
“”We all grow up, don’t we?” McRae said.
“I’m 50 today, I’m getting a bit old, he’s 26 or something, he’s growing. Some take a little bit longer to find who they are, we’re really proud of his journey [and] his growth, we all want to keep growing.
People don’t like change. ‘Oh you need to change’, no one likes to change, but people like to grow, people want to grow, so we’ll continue to use that language around our environment; let’s just get better.
Craig McRae after 2023 Preliminary Final
Maybe I was misty eyed and glowing as a Pies fan, but it smacked of being a profound message we could apply to the reasons we stay and work with teenagers, and meet them at their most difficult.
I choose to stay because teenagers need good people with them, as do their parents, who need as much support sometimes to know it is normal and going to work out one day.
Teenagers need experts who understand and remember what it feels like to be deep in the soup. They need people who don’t just know, but understand. They need safe, reliable, trustworthy and consistent people, not friends or mavens of popular and cool.
I choose to stay because teenagers need excellent teachers committed to seeking excellence, not just survival, and certainly not those seeking status or glory.
This is a double edged commitment. One the one hand, it is a high cost decision where one accepts the frustrations and realities of the journey, yet there is also the often long delayed reward of seeing students come out the other side, or even get small wins and have their best selves emerge from the rock. Sometimes there is nothing but the hope it all worked out.
It is a real challenge – personally as much as professionally, as one chooses to work where the tension and volatility are highest, while the perceived glories of teaching senior students are low, along with intrinsic motivation and attention that one might expect with older, more settled and calmer brains.
I also choose to stay because they need people who won’t let them off the hook.
They need people who know that the only real way to build resilience and character is by enduring, doing and living through hard things, or that growth is messy, inconsistent and far from guaranteed, and that they will most likely be okay.
They need people who will be there when they need, not just in spite of the challenge, but because of they inherent challenge.
I choose to stay.
Charlie Hynes 