Teachers' jobs a love affair turned sour

Secondary teachers are angry. They have thrown out the deal agreed by their union and gone on strike. JAN CORBETT finds out why.

Lunchtime with some of the most demoralised people in the country is surprisingly educational. They do not look like people of learning and authority, and that might be part of the problem.

They will, no doubt, protest that I mention the men come to work in shorts and sandals. There isn't a tie or a suit jacket among them.

In the way of staffrooms they drink instant coffee, or tea from a large pot. No espresso machines or filter pots here, nor the opportunity to stroll off to their favourite cafe for a slice of calzone with salad on the side. They sit on what look like government-issue padded chairs and eat home-made sandwiches.

This scene from Pukekohe High School is replicated daily in high school staffrooms up and down the country, probably all over the Western world.

Once teachers were revered by their communities. Now they have slipped down the totem pole in how they are regarded and, perhaps, in how they regard themselves.

Most are mid to late middle-aged - the average age for secondary teachers is 44. They are university-educated and if they are the top of their grading will be earning a base salary of $50,000 a year, with the opportunity to raise that to around $57,000 if they take on head-of-department and dean responsibilities.

In rural New Zealand that would rate as a pretty good income. In the cities, it is difficult to house and raise a family on.

They work hard for their money, arriving at work soon after 7 am and not leaving until around 5.30 pm. They take marking home and often telephone parents in the evening to discuss problems. Or the parents telephone them.

They work in the weekends. They are expected to take on extra-curricular duties such as sport, drama or producing the school magazine. Sure, they get more holidays, but they say they spend much of that time unwinding and catching up on sleep.

Although these teachers may look unremarkable, they are each in their own way inspirational. Talk to them long enough and they cannot help but admit that they love what they do, but they are tired of not being loved for doing it.

So when the Weekend Herald meets them midweek, they are preparing for yet another strike - part of a series in the 10-month dispute for better pay and conditions.

The current situation, however, is unprecedented. Their union negotiators last year accepted the Government's offer of a 3.5 per cent salary rise over two years, an extra $2500 for teachers in hard-to-staff schools and guaranteed non-teaching hours.

But 60 per cent of Post Primary Teachers Association members rejected the deal.

Teachers in the tougher-to-teach, more expensive-to-live-in cities of Auckland and Wellington were the most decisively opposed. Never before had members voted against a deal that had been accepted by their executive.

Teachers have never really been happy with their lot, but lately their lot has been getting worse, they say. The extra internal-assessment demands on them from the new National Certificate of Educational Achievement are weighing heavily. At the same time they look around the staffroom at places vacated by those who have left for overseas and lucrative teaching jobs in countries paying bigger salaries, sometimes with houses attached, to alleviate their own teacher shortages. It's unsettling.

They are irritated that a Government full of rhetoric about a knowledge economy does not seem to value the first purveyors of that knowledge. They are doubly annoyed that politicians are offering them 3.5 per cent over two years, while MPs got between 4 and 5 per cent. They expected a Labour Government to be their friend.

They are sceptical, too, about the offer of fewer hours spent in the classroom. They say it has not been matched by an increase in staff, so the only way it could work was to increase class sizes. They are opposed to that.

The trouble with teaching, they say, is that because everyone went to school everyone thinks they know what the job entails. Few appreciate the reality.

Set in rural South Auckland, Pukekohe and its high school are a microcosm of middle New Zealand. Pakeha dominate the school population, but Maori and Pacific Islanders are well represented, as are Chinese and Indians whose families run Pukekohe's market-gardening industry.

With a roll of 1350, it is a large school, but its students - smart in their grey, black, gold and red uniforms - are considered less street-wise than their city counterparts. That is teacher-speak for being easier to control.

The boys favour short, heavily gelled hairstyles. The majority of the girls appear to be familiar with hair dye. The staff number around 70.

Judy De Boni has been teaching since 1966, with time off to travel and raise a family. She started teaching at primary level but at the same time studied for her degree and has been teaching English to Pukekohe secondary students since 1988. In her time teaching she says the workload has doubled and the students have become more difficult.

Having worked in both the primary and secondary sectors, she is most bitter about pay parity between primary and secondary teachers. She says teaching secondary students is much more demanding. Primary teachers have the same 30 or so students each day. She has 150.

That means 150 reports and parent interviews, not to mention dealing with the teenage problems that range from unwanted pregnancies to drug dependency. Plus there is all the after-hours marking.

On Wednesday she began her teaching day with the top third-form English class - more than 30 bright and eager students when, as De Boni points out, the teacher to pupil ratio is supposed to be 1:25.

But, of course, this group is a pleasure to teach. The only danger for a teacher would be not keeping up with them.

English with the lower fourth form is a different experience.

"Miss, I left my Harry Potter book at home," says one entering the library while De Boni wonders where the rest of the class is. She shepherds them through the book-borrowing process before settling them back into the classroom for 10 minutes of silent reading, reminding them "this is the most important skill of the lot" and praising them for their concentration.

The lamentable do-as-you're-told style of teaching has disappeared, replaced by positive reinforcement. And that, too, is hard work.

De Boni uses their reading time to hand back homework she marked overnight and to check the roll. She never sits down and moves the lesson straight on to spelling - their homework showed some deficiencies here. Then it is on to the book they are studying, The Outsiders. A collective moan goes up when she instructs them to open their folders and write down their impressions of the characters.

By day's end the clientele has deteriorated considerably with a class of special-needs fifth formers. De Boni likens it to being in charge of 18 bonfires. The trick is to keep them fully occupied, to never let the pace of the lesson flag. Be warned the teacher who hits this classroom unprepared.

For reasons that still exercise the minds of the gender theorists, 16 of them are boys while the only two girls in the class could move up a grade but are resisting. De Boni reminds herself to speak to their parents about it again.

The only doors opening in front of some of these distracted, sullen teenagers are prison gates. You sense, watching them slouch over their desks, that their only hope of a better future will be an inspirational teacher. But how much can one teacher deal with? One student says defiantly to De Boni that at 16 he is too old to be reading books.

For a woman of De Boni's age and experience, these teenagers are hardly a threat. But for a young teacher such as Lorinda Hill in the room next door, it can get more frightening.

Aged 27 and slightly built, Hill describes being on playground duty and having to deal with intimidating drug dealers who hang around near the playground.

"I've interrupted a drugs sale. I don't feel that's part of my job."

Teachers are not trained to deal with these situations in or out of the classroom. "I wouldn't know what to do if a student pulled a knife on me," she says.

Hill became a teacher because her own experience of school was less than ideal and an inspirational teacher convinced her the only way to change things was from within. Plus, she says, "I love teenagers. I love the fact they have so many ideas."

Fours years after graduating from teacher training and earning $36,500 a year, Hill says "for the job I do the money is inadequate".

She often puts in a 12-hour working day to keep up with the administration and pastoral care that goes with teaching.

"I've finally been able to reclaim my weekends. I've no idea how someone married with a family copes."

At the end of the year she will go travelling and has no plans to return to teaching.

Mary Allen, head of the English department, wanted to be a teacher since she was a child. She loved learning and wanted to share that love. "I do still love it," she says after 25 years teaching. "But it's a labour of love. It's a vocation, but it's unfair for the Government to exploit that."

A meaningful pay rise, she says, would make her feel more valued.

Dr Hawi Winter, a German-born science teacher, came to the job later in life. He started as a forensic scientist, spent time as a self-employed insurance agent, but after the stock-market crash turned to teaching. He was living in the area and the local high school was desperate for a science teacher. After relieving work, he went on to teacher training college.

That was 13 years ago. He does not see himself staying in teaching until retirement. He doesn't think his sanity will hold up that long. Of all his occupations, he has found teaching the most stressful and the lowest paid.

We meet him fresh from one of his toughest fourth-form science classes, and today was no exception.

"One threw up, and one I referred to the head of department for defiance."

By defiance he means being sworn at in words that cannot be published here. He thinks teachers have only themselves to blame for their poor pay and conditions.

"The teaching profession is appallingly benign when it comes to looking after themselves."

Even now, the feeling at Pukekohe High is that they would prefer not to strike. Ask them about pay rates and they say it is not so much themselves they are worried about, but that the profession is not financially attractive to young graduates burdened with student loans.

They fear their profession will be devalued further if it cannot attract quality candidates.

Roy Perrin, joint head of mathematics, says it is almost impossible to get a New Zealand-born maths teacher. He is English-born. The other head of department, John Murdie, is from Northern Ireland.

Murdie says he drifted into teaching during a teacher shortage in Britain, but loves it and cannot imagine doing anything else.

But they see how few seventh formers are considering teaching for a career. Even Allen, with her deep attachment to the job, tells those who are considering it to think carefully before heading for teachers' college.

Yet the statistics defy these observations. At around 1600 a year, twice as many students are at teachers' training colleges than enrolled 10 years ago. Their numbers peaked in 1998, with 1798 signing up for a career in front of the blackboard.

Between 9 and 10 per cent leave teaching each year, a rate that stays relatively constant.

Irene Lynch, the Ministry of Education's national manager of Teach NZ, says the trend now is for people to get into teaching later. She says they field a lot of inquiries from people in desk-bound jobs who are desperate to get out and work with people.

But still teachers like Lorinda Hill are continually asked why they went into teaching. She walks back into her stifling hot classroom of more than 30 sixth formers, where there are not enough books to go around and not enough curtains to cover the windows when she wants to teach film studies, and wonders much the same thing. She would be happier with just an acknowledgment that she is doing a good job.

Still, the teachers at Pukekohe High cannot help mentioning that the job can be rewarding.

Winter smiles, remembering "a scumbag class" who all passed School Certificate science. "That really gave me a kick."