I remember paying a bucket load on dues with the Teachers’ Union and when I actually needed help they couldn’t. 
It just accelerated my departure from the profession.
Amen sir/madam/whatever you choose to identify as. They actually got kids to walk out of class for climate change marches - erm…no. My dues do not pay for you to encourage kids to walk out of class.
I do respect the role of unions in general, but inside it’s freaking rotten.
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Not sure what that’s got to do with anything.
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Fostering that kind of attitude, sounds like they are hard left politically.
Read the next quote…
Yep. Often they carry on with other causes that aren’t really related to their core function. Like supporting kids walking out of class.
If kids want to protest…do it on the weekend.
Often they sell out their members for a pittance in terms of increased salaries and help the Department implement detrimental policies. They refuse point blank to listen someone who can speak on a medical basis on things like mental health.
They won’t find teachers. They won’t find TAS teachers. I’d be advising against anyone going into teachers until senior management gets a kick in the arse, and the Fed goes back to basics.
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If teachers want to protest… do it on the weekend.
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But usually we are protesting over our rights as teachers. You know, what the union is meant to be looking after. Not spending time, money and resources into allowing kids to wag school.
And after lockdown, you lot should be grateful for the role teachers play, after you had to learn quickly how to home school. Because the government and teaching authorities certainly weren’t!
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But God forbid children protest their rights, no?
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They can protest what they want. Just don’t involve teachers in it. That is what I am getting getting at.
We are not supposed to expose any political views at all, at least not direct to students. What the fed does completely contradicts this.
Let the students form their own union. The teachers Feds need to look out for their own. And they fail at that, I can assure you.
The AEU represents the education industry overall, students rights are a part of that.
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Interesting.
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You can’t have your cake and eat it too - these protests represent an issue that should be of critical importance to everyone (especially our politicians) and have the real potential to impact future generations.
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With all due respect, they don’t know who they are, they are developing, that is why they are not treated as adults. They will make mistakes and you allow some leeway (for most things anyway). They need to be in school developing.
When I was 15/16, I actually thought I should have the right to vote, but I now know that was wrong because I did not fully understand society and how it worked - nor the concept of earning your place in life. As a teenager, you really cannot comprehend it, because you have not lived in the real world of earning your living, having responsibilities and adult consequences for your actions.
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Plenty of 15 and 16 year olds are in the workforce. The world isn’t insular - teenagers have lives outside the classroom.
If anything, you want to engage young people in issues that can be framed as non-partisan (eg. climate change) to teach critical thinking and media literacy among other things. Ignore politics altogether and you risk what we’re seeing increasingly with teenage boys in particular, who tend to absorb politics inadvertently through YouTube or the Reddits and 4chans of the world and fall into the alt-right rabbit hole. The contemporary curriculum fails to take this into account.
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Science isn’t partisan. It’s sad some posters seem to think reality has a “hard left” bias.
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We get treated like shit by some students. In nearly all cases, they side with the students. Where’s our rights to respect? As far as I’m concerned, fuck them.
Fine. Just don’t get involved. They should be at school.
Thank you.
The entire system needs to be blown up and restarted. Unions included. And teachers need more respect. You’ll have more people like me forced out, especially in specialist subjects, and you’ll wonder why we are falling behind the rest of the world.
I know plenty of teachers who don’t despise their work as much as you seem to. Perhaps you should change. No point doing something you hate so much.
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Don’t worry, you’ll get your sick wish soon enough.
I love teaching. There is nothing like showing a young mind how to acquire a skill. There are plenty of great teachers out there who are doing great things despite the shit they are dealt with.
The shit that governments, parents, certain aspects of the media, fuck, some of you lot, give teachers. Even so called “colleagues” who bully each other, like they’ve done to me, and get away with it.
It’s that sort of shit that should be eradicated. But it gets swept under the carpet by hopeless unions for a pittance, whilst they support unrelated causes.
That’s what I’m getting at. The union is hopeless and they know it. Fellow teachers know it.
Those teachers have a gift and it’s amazing. I admire them so much.
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