Personal Development
FIVE REASONS WHY TEACHING IS NO LONGER A JOB FOR LIFE
Gone are the days when a young person leaving university and deciding to become a teacher wants to do the job for their entire working life. In years gone by, teachers would say things like;“ teaching is a calling”“ I will dedicate my life to my job” but that’ s not the case anymore. It is now quite strange to find a teacher who wants to remain in the classroom for their entire career. In the last issue of the magazine, we looked at ten career choices for teachers who have had enough of the classroom, and that article was one of the most popular articles of the issue. Why was that article so popular? Was it because the issue was published in January, when most people are reassessing their lives or setting goals for the new year or could it be because most teachers have a vision for themselves, which includes only doing a set number of years in the classroom and then moving on? In this article I want to put forward four reasons why teaching is no longer seen as a job for life.
Lack of autonomy:
The idea of teacher autonomy refers to the professional independence of teachers in schools, especially the extent to which they can make autonomous decisions about what they teach to students and how they teach it. This idea of teacher autonomy no longer exists, as the profession has become increasingly controlled, often times by persons who have no knowledge of or experience in the education sector. What is taught and how it is taught are often politically motivated and manipulated. Policy makers often argue that the teacher has control over how the curriculum is delivered but educators know better, because there is very little that can be done to change the delivery of a curriculum, which is designed to help students pass a standardised test or attain a predetermined benchmark.
This lack of autonomy is driving younger teachers out of the profession. Not being able to be creative and to co design the learning with your students and being forced to hit certain targets by a given date, sucks the joy out of teaching. Having gained their qualifications, teachers want to be trusted as capable professionals who are able to design and deliver a programme of learning that is most suitable for their students within certain guidelines. It is understood that there has to be some stipulations on what is taught, but the overly prescriptive nature of modern curriculum, leaves little room for teacher input. Younger teachers who want to express themselves creatively tend to leave the profession to find other ways of doing so.
Lack of trust:
This goes hand in hand with the lack of autonomy, but it also goes deeper. It seems recently, that everyone is looking over the teacher’ s shoulder. Government, society, school administration and parents and even students, all seem to believe that