Learning Josh

According to Phil Dye, from THINK Education group, ‘children don’t need teachers, they need great teachers’. His opinion article on ABC’s news website about education reform has got me thinking. Dye actually supports the government’s education reform by making teachers’ pay salaries comparable with the performance of students. His article can be accessed here – http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/05/2356033.htm

Dye spells out the reasons why the reform is good. It makes teachers accountable. It means that teachers have to change their strategies, stay innovative and fresh so that their students are performing well. He quotes ‘It seems our schools contain many teachers who have never left school. Coming directly from university or the old college system straight into the classroom, their experience and knowledge of the world outside their teaching cube is limited to the odd overseas vacation.’ I agree with Dye, that there are many teachers out there who have never left a school environment and do not know how the ‘real world’ works. For many jobs out there, your pay is partly determined by your performance. Why should teachers be treated any differently?

I know I don’t want to be those teachers that are so ‘old school’ and uninspiring that I am only in teaching because I’ll get paid. What a wasted life! Dye calls these teachers ‘death by superannuation’ teachers – those that are waiting for their retirement and using old and slack teaching strategies from the 1970’s in today’s world.

If this education reform kicks in though, and my pay doesn’t increase because my students haven’t improved…will I take it personally? Will I feel like a failure? What happens if I’ve done my best to change my teaching strategies but nothing can get through? What if I am at school and most of the kids are in transient families?

Well, I never studied teaching to become rich in the first place, but an extra $20k a year would be handy in paying the mortgage…