Administrators′ Corner
Are educators putting others
off joining the profession?
By Leisa Simapili
I
am an avid social media user. I
like, follow and subscribe, to many
of the major education websites
and publications globally. I have
become very accustomed to staying
up to date with the latest news
and trends via my Twitter feed and
Facebook timeline. However, recently
I have noticed a very worrying trend.
Most of the news stories that I see
about education and teachers have
been overwhelmingly negative. This
is irrespective of the country from
which the news is emanating. What
is even worse is that the majority of
the negative posts have been from
teachers themselves.
Let us face it, mainstream media,
historically has not been very kind to
teachers or very complimentary of
the education systems of the world.
Publishers generally only publish
sensational pieces on teachers or
education. Very seldom are teachers,
who are doing an exceptional job
given any airtime. However, when
educators perpetuate this negative
press by constantly publicizing the
negative aspects of our profession,
then it is hard for others to take the
profession seriously.
This made me start to take a closer
8 | May - Jun 2016 |
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look at other professions. Apart from
some sections of law enforcement in
a few countries, I was hard pressed
to find other professions, which were
constantly churning out the same
amount of negative rhetoric about
itself.
My attention turned to the recent
contract negotiations in the United
Kingdom between the government
and junior doctors. Even though
the contract negotiations were at
a standstill and there were massive
protests, I did not find any selfdeprecating posts online by junior
doctors. I stand to be corrected. They
generally spoke of the wonderful jobs
they were doing and how vital their
role is to the healthcare service. There
were hardly any memes of the worn
out, broke and depressed doctor. It
made me wonder, are we as educators
causing the society to see us in a
negative light simply by the way we
speak of ourselves?
We hear it almost daily, that there is a
global teacher shortage and I am by
no means suggesting that teachers
have caused this on themselves. I
would, however like to suggest that
we have not been doing a great job at
encouraging the future generations to
Class Time
consider a career in teaching. When
choosing a profession, a young person
would naturally look for others who
have been in that profession for some
time. What are young people seeing
when they look at persons in the
teaching profession or in education in
general? Can we confidently say that
we have portrayed the profession in a
positive light?
With the help of my good friends at
Teach UAE Magazine, we have started
a social media campaign called
“Change the Rhetoric”. We are asking
educators globally to start making
positive social media posts about the
profession using #ChangeTheRhetoric.
These posts can be about your class,
lesson, school or the profession in
general. This is by no means the
magic bullet for solving the problems
we face as educators, nor will it cause
the public to immediately start to view
us differently. However, it will help to
create a shift in perspective for us as
educators and for those in the society
that are paying close attention.
I really hope you will join us on;
Twitter
(@TEACHUAE_MAG),
Facebook (Teach UAE Magazine) and
Instagram
(@teachuaemagazine).
Together, we can #ChangeTheRhetoric.