It was 3.30pm. The sun was glaring and the chorus of laughter had eased. As afternoon pick-up became a distant memory, Carolyn Anderson frantically rushed to the parking lot. She carried her pens, pictures, and phonics flash cards in her main bag. She also carried her lunchbox and another bag filled with sheets of words and numbers. It looked like she was coming out of a supermarket.
“I am going to try and cut and laminate all these sheets before I go to Pilates,” Narellan Public School teacher’s aide Carolyn Anderson said.
“But then I also have to cook dinner, too.”
Mrs Anderson is one of many teacher’s aides in Australia who have become overwhelmed with the workload and pressure involved with teaching. She is in a special support unit with students who have disabilities or have behavioural issues. She is 54 years old and is considering finding another job due to being mentally and physically exhausted from teaching.
“I am becoming older, and with that, I have to look at my future,” she said.
“I don’t know how many years of me changing nappies I can do before I decide it isn’t worth it anymore.”
Carolyn had an interesting career journey that led to teaching. She was once in real estate as a receptionist, before becoming an area manager at Blockbuster. Once she had her first child, she looked at a more stable job to support her family.
Teaching was the obvious choice.
Her late mother, Marilyn Bowen, was a teacher’s aide at Airds High School. Carolyn looked up to her and saw the enthusiasm she had for wanting students to learn. Her mother also worked in the support unit at Airds, helping students who had additional needs, and some days were quite challenging. At the end of the day, she would still have a big smile on her face. She still had the love for teaching even on her hardest days.
This made Carolyn make the easy decision. To become a teacher’s aide at Briar Road Public School.
This public school is opposite Airds High School.
“I do feel like there is some full circle moment there,” Carolyn said with a laugh.
“I just felt like this is where I should be, helping students from low socio-economic backgrounds in their learning, just like my mum did.”
Carolyn was there for over a decade before she went to Narellan Public School. In 2020, a year in at her new school, everything drastically changed in teaching. It was all because of one hyphenated word that was on everybody’s lips.
“I believe COVID-19 had not only destroyed the art of teaching but also how we perceive teaching,” she said.
“Teachers were once on a pedestal like doctors in the community; today they seem less than and with that they don’t get any respect.”
“Now imagine how much respect a teacher’s aide has.”
Due to the nationwide teaching shortage, Mrs Anderson was given an opportunity to study teaching. It was called the “Commonwealth Teaching Scholarship Program.” The Australian Government chose 5,000 people in each state to participate in the scholarship program.
The reason she was selected was because she had accumulated over a decade of service as a teacher’s aide. The Australian government had this program to support new undergraduate and postgraduate teaching students to meet the costs of their study in an accredited teaching degree.
The scholarships were up to $40,000 per student for new full-time undergraduate teaching students and up to $20,000 for new full-time postgraduate teaching students. Recipients of this program are also required to undertake a commitment to teach in government schools or government-run early learning settings once they graduate from their degree.
“It seemed like a great opportunity until I realised that I would have to take off work to do full-time study, and if I do that, I would have to use the scholarship money to live, not for the degree,” she said.
“Another factor was that if I was to complete the degree, the Department of Education could move me anywhere to a public school that needed teachers.”
Unfortunately, Ms Anderson had to decline the offer as she felt it didn’t serve her interests.
Following the footsteps of his grandmother and mother, university student Ben Anderson is studying to become a high school science teacher. He knows that he will be entering a demanding workforce with the benefit of a guaranteed job.
“I know it is declining steadily, and schools are looking for teachers right now,” he said.
“I feel like there is a shortage of science teachers now, and science is probably the most important subject to be learned and taught.”
The federal Department of Education has predicted that by 2025 demand for secondary teachers will exceed the supply of new graduate teachers by about 4,100.
Senior Lecturer at Curtin University, Dr Saul Karnovsky, predicts that the scale of the teacher shortages and increasing burnout will only get worse.
“We have seen teacher shortages in the past, no doubt,” he said.
“But the scale and the scope of this particular crisis now are unprecedented.”
Dr Karnovsky believes that more psychologists, counsellors and social workers are desperately needed in schools to help ease the emotional toll of teachers.
A recent study on “Australia’s teacher workforce today” by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited (AITS) indicated that there are three important factors for teachers leaving the workforce before retirement in 2022. These include the classroom environment (27.3%), workload and coping (40.5%), and recognition and reward (32.3%), which collectively indicate there is a lot of change that needs to be done in the teacher occupation.
Source: ATWD 2023
Mrs Anderson believes that the overwhelming workload is contributing to teachers experiencing burnout early in their careers.
“As a teacher’s aide, I work 8:30am to 3:15pm. I’m generally every night adding on an extra two hours where I’m printing out things like laminating and writing a picture thing to help assist my teacher in our classroom.”
“A lot of colleagues over the last two years and teachers that have been teaching for like 25 years of knowledge we are actually losing, which is a really big concern.”
We were now at Carolyn’s car, and she passed me her overflowing bags. I placed them on the passenger seat, and a question arose. A question that I didn’t ask. I asked her why the love of teaching has now stopped and if she still loves her job.
A pause falls within the small space.
She is in her car seat.
“I think a lot of teachers have stopped the love of teaching, but I think students have too,” she said.
A smile flickered across her face.
“To see their eyes light up when they have discovered something or that can write their name or they have been able to read a page. To want to come to school and to see that enthusiasm and excitement of the student.”
The smile slowly disappears.
“We don’t always see that now; I used to see that nearly every single day.”