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💁🏼‍♀️What Teachers Really Want (But No One’s Asking) · ✨️Aligned and Thriving: For Teachers🌿

• 0:25
  Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Aligned
• 0:29
  and Thriving for Teachers. Now, today, as always, I might
• 0:35
  say something that annoys a few people, but I want to talk to
• 0:38
  you about what teachers actually need, but rarely get.
• 0:45
  So teachers don't need more strategies.
• 0:49
  We don't need another PD. We don't need another framework.
• 0:53
  We don't need another new initiative because if that
• 0:56
  actually worked, we wouldn't still be having the same
• 1:00
  problems. The truth is, we are constantly
• 1:04
  told what we need. Better planning, more structure,
• 1:09
  more accountability, more data. But what if that's not actually
• 1:14
  what we need at all? What if the problem isn't that
• 1:18
  teachers need more time, and it's that too much of the time
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  and too much things just keep getting added and nothing's
• 1:25
  actually getting taken away? So instead of listing what
• 1:29
  people and teachers actually need, I want to talk to you
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  about the difference between what we need and like the ideal
• 1:37
  world, the real versus the ideal.
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  So what we're told we need versus what we're actually
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  experiencing. Because that, that gap, that
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  that's where frustration really lies.
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  So #1 let's start with the first one.
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  So teachers need more time. Yep, we hear this all the time.
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  Teachers just need to be better at time management.
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  No, we don't need more time. We need protected time.
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  Because let's be honest, our planning time gets taken,
• 2:09
  meetings get added in, extras get piled on, and suddenly the
• 2:13
  time that you thought you did have, it's gone.
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  And it's not that teachers can't manage the time, it's that the
• 2:20
  system keeps taking it away. And it's why agreements keep
• 2:25
  needing to change because things get added in bit by bit, but
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  nothing seems to get removed. And these things just keep
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  piling up. We have to use our our planning
• 2:36
  time for relief coverages because we can't get teachers.
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  It just all piles up. I can say that not everything
• 2:43
  needs to be a meeting. Sometimes we could have just
• 2:46
  sent an email or a note about it.
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  There's just a lot of things that take up time that probably
• 2:51
  didn't need to. Number two, teachers need trust.
• 2:57
  Yes, we are told that we are trusted professionals, but are
• 3:01
  we? You're trusted until you're not.
• 3:05
  As a teacher, the constant check insurance, the data demands, the
• 3:09
  needing to prove everything that you do, it just creates this
• 3:12
  feeling that I know what my students need, but I can't
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  actually do it freely because there's always someone higher up
• 3:21
  checking in or changing the bar. The bar just keeps moving, the
• 3:26
  standard keeps changing, and we can't be trusted to do our job.
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  Number three, teachers need support.
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  Well, look, this one's tricky because support looks different
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  everywhere. In some schools, there's
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  genuinely supportive leadership. In others, there's a lot of
• 3:48
  talk, not a lot of action. But I want to flip it for a
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  second because leadership, well, we're human too.
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  And I say this from experience. I will always put my team first.
• 4:00
  I will always try to support everyone.
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  But life happens, and I'm learning to be more honest about
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  that, to tell people when things aren't going well, and to admit
• 4:10
  when I need to be a human too. Because a lot of the time,
• 4:14
  leadership are holding everything together.
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  We're taking pressure from higher up.
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  We're quietly burning out and no one's actually talking about
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  that. So that also needs to be
• 4:25
  considered because we are still teachers too #4 teachers need
• 4:31
  less pressure. Look, pressure for us is
• 4:34
  everywhere. It's in the results, it's in
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  with the parents, the behaviours, expectations.
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  But there's one that just hits the hardest is that no one is
• 4:48
  putting more pressure on you than you.
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  Yes, obviously there's external expectations that we can't
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  control. Excuse me, Yog, but we can
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  control how much we actually carry.
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  We can't control the system, but we can control our response to
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  it #5 teachers need well being. Wow.
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  Schools love to talk about well being.
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  They love it. Let's be real.
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  Well being is not a yoga session in week 8.
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  It is not a poster in the staff room.
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  It is not a one off initiative. It is not setting up a well
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  being team to just check in on staff.
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  No, well being is a basic human need.
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  It's it's like those things like going to the bathroom on time,
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  taking a lunch break, not working every single night.
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  This is not like an add on extra like we need to just sprinkle
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  some well being on there. No, this is the actual baseline.
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  Yes, schools are creating well being teams and they think
• 6:03
  they're offering support, but a lot of the time it's just
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  surface level. So then you have to take your
• 6:10
  well being into your own hands. And I can't stress that enough.
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  You cannot keep waiting for the system to step in and support
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  our mental health and our well being.
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  We need to take well being into our own hands to deal with it.
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  And I know I will 110% support any teacher who's having trouble
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  with that. And that's why another reason
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  why I started things like the podcast, so that I can help
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  teachers tap into being able to look after their own well being
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  because I struggled with that for years.
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  I burnt out multiple times and had to learn from that.
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  So you can't keep relying on the system.
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  Yes, they can tell us that we need it, but you actually start
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  needing to do it yourself. Number six, teachers need to
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  meet every student's needs. Every single one.
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  That's actually impossible. Yep, probably turned a few heads
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  there. But you cannot be everything for
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  every single student every single day.
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  Seriously, that is what burns a teacher out.
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  So instead, you need to take it one day at a time, one step at a
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  time, just one little snippet at a time.
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  For me, I've always had a system.
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  By the end of the week, I would have checked in with every
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  student, probably not perfectly and definitely not all at once,
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  but consistently. I would have checked in with
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  every kid and I had a notebook in the back of my journal which
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  ticked basically that I had checked in and touched base with
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  every kid. Every morning I would greet them
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  and say good morning, so we would have that connection.
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  You would know who was having a bad day straight away from that
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  moment because you had that relationship with those kids.
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  But my big check insurance, I at least had one of them with them
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  every single week. So I knew.
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  But you can't be expected to do those things every single day,
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  OK? So just take it one little bit
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  at a time. You can only do what you can
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  manage, but be consistent. And that is enough because I've
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  told you before and I'll tell you again, we don't need more
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  strategies. We need a system that actually
• 8:16
  supports us and remembers that we are human.
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  OK, we are human. Yes, the system needs to change,
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  but that's not going to happen quickly.
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  It's not going to happen overnight.
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  It's certainly not going to happen until we have some people
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  that actually work and understand education trying to
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  control it. But you need to step up yourself
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  to do things because again, control the things that you can
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  control. So that means that you need to
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  protect yourself by protecting your boundaries, protecting your
• 8:54
  time, protecting your energy, and protecting what you say yes
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  to. Because if you don't, your job
• 9:01
  will just take everything from you.
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  It that's what's going to burn you out.
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  That's what's going to take everything away.
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  Because what is it that teachers actually need?
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  That's it's not the question is it?
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  It is what are we willing to stop accepting?
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  OK, so it goes back to that saying that nothing changes
• 9:24
  until something changes. And sometimes that starts with
• 9:29
  you, it starts with us. This is all connected to why
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  teachers have been striking across, across the whole of
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  Australia. It's a nationwide issue that
• 9:41
  we're underappreciated, we're underpaid for what we do, and
• 9:45
  the expectations are so vast and broad that we are slammed.
• 9:52
  Well, basically we are given them from systems and then we
• 9:55
  are expected to step up to that. So This is why these things need
• 10:00
  to be reviewed and changed so that people can remember that we
• 10:06
  are human too and we are a profession.
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  You keep telling everyone that you trust us, you trust what we
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  do. We are professionals, we are
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  this, we are that. But people are forgetting that
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  we are humans too and we have rights as well and our well
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  being is absolutely hands down important.
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  So it all starts with you. It all starts with us.
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  It starts with everything that we do and the changes that we
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  can make ourselves and controlling the things that we
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  can control and stop being willing to accept certain
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  things. OK, that's my short, short
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  little reminder for you today to talk to you about.
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  What is it that teachers actually need?
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  Maybe you should ask a teacher if you're not a teacher or we
• 10:47
  work in education, what you think, what they think they
• 10:50
  actually need, because that is what is most important is
• 10:54
  listening to the people who are actually on the ground doing the
• 10:58
  work day by day, turning up for those kids, for our kids.
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  So that's my, my little rant for you today.
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  So again, thank you for listening.
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  If you have any comments or questions or whatever, make sure
• 11:12
  you pop them in. I happily love to read and
• 11:16
  listen to anyone. If you want to message me, you
• 11:18
  can go to aligned and thriving for teachers.
• 11:20
  Also got my email and all those types of things down there if
• 11:22
  you want to talk with me further or anything like that.
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  But in case you weren't told today, you are enough, you're
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  doing enough, you are appreciated, you are loved and I
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  hope you have the best day. Goodbye my loves.