Teacher Influence: A lesson in not overloading our teachers with our responsibilities

G,day. Today I’d like you to think back to the best teacher(s) you had and what mark they may have made in your life.

What was it about them – the fact that they knew their stuff and cared? My French teacher, Mr Wheeler had a profound effect on me – not because he was a brilliant teacher but because he cared. He not only liked kids but he also took our tennis team on Sports Days and went with us all over Sydney to play. I so much wanted to say thank you to Mr Wheeler that I worked hard in that subject and did better there than any other subject. My retired friends I went to school with, speak in hush adulating tones about their Maths teacher, Mr Coroneos, and such was the influence he had that many of them went into maths related careers like Engineering, Accountancy, Architecture or became Maths teachers themselves.

It’s a fact that, as parents get busier and the world gets more complex, we seem to want teachers to fix it all – behaviour, IT, multi culturalism, sex education, bullying, gender equity, gender fluidity – and we pay them relatively little for the privilege. A teacher by the name of Rod Clarke put it this way:

When society has a problem, a matter of import,

It must be taught in schools, they say, or something of the sort.

Traffic mayhem on our roads, there are too many fools -

Bicycle safety, that’s the trick - it must be taught in schools!

Too many drownings at our beaches, right across the nation,

Let’s teach the kids in all the schools about resuscitation. .

I see the future clearly now, as if through crystal glass.

A vast array of problems solved, as through the schools they pass.

Table manners, sexual conduct, coping with divorce.

Anti-smoking, prejudice, and conservation of course.

Children hooked on television? Parents don’t you frown,

The school can teach them how to cut their viewing hours down.

I know there’ll be complaints about this passing of the buck,

But just ignore those teachers now, it’s really their bad luck,

They always whinge and moan, you know, they really are so trite,

They even want to teach the kids to count and read and write!

Now reading’s fine and grammar, too, and all those spelling rules,

But really now, I ask you this, must they be taught in schools.                      

But to all the teachers who may be listening, just keep in mind, as one famous teacher, Haim Ginnott put it. "I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate, it's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make the child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized".

What a privilege it has been to be a teacher. I may be better remembered as a child psychologist but it was the confidence with kids that teaching gave me that allowed me to make such great connection with so many families over so many years. Thanks kids.