For now sits expectation in the air
PPTA News September 2009, p. 3
We have high expectations of ourselves as an association as set out in the three objects in our constitution – to advance the cause of education, uphold the just claims of our members and affirm and advance the Treaty of Waitangi. We have high expectations of ourselves as professionals as set out in our own code of ethics and that of the Teachers Council.
We also have high expectations of each other as members. We expect members to exercise their democratic rights within the organisation both in the preparation for and at PPTA’s annual conference and we expect and require members to exercise their judgement in the development of a claim for the Secondary Teachers’ Collective Agreement which expires in June 2010 and in the ratification of any new settlement.
We expect our students to be reasonable and step up to the ideals expressed in the New Zealand Curriculum, and by and large we meet with success. They learn to grapple with specialist language and sophisticated concepts, to relate to others not just in a passive way but actively, to participate in our society in constructive ways and to manage themselves.
When our own expectations are matched and aligned with systemic supports, all students can be assured of a high quality system for their lifelong learning and to suceed within it.
Our expectation of others extends to our representatives in government. We expect them to understand the need to invest in the intellectual infrastructure of this country, its schools, its students and its educational workforce. We expect any savings (read cuts), if indeed there is a cogent reason for making them in the first place, to be the result of a careful and coherent strategy that has sectorwide understanding and support. It is only with this understanding and support that such massive changes could possibly proceed.
We expect a system that is fair (and free), not a fragmented collection of elements that exist without coherence or a system that is based on mere market mimicry. (Thinking everything can be just left to the market is so last century!)
We expect our professional judgement to be valued. The minister of education has invited us to contribute our ideas for teacher staffing cuts. We are never short of ideas but none of them involve cutting staffing and certainly not cutting front-line staffing, something the electorate was explicitly promised would not occur.
As was noted in the last viewpoint, it is not possible to cut secondary staffing without severely damaging students’ education. We expect to be called to a meeting this month to hear from the minister how she imagines her expectations for improved performance from schools can be achieved in the face of staff cuts.
Our students achieve good results on the international stage and will be part of a robust economic recovery or a slow and torturous one. We look out for them and they also look after each other, sometimes in spite of a system that spends considerably less on child welfare than other OECD countries, less than half the OECD average in fact.
They are not all, always happy though and when they are not, for whatever reasons, we are the ones who often end up face to face with their ire and their resentment.
However, we hang in there as we know that in the small minority of more severe cases, their experience at school may be the only calm, reasonable and secure part of their day or night. Good things do happen in schools and far more often than not.
We know the angst ridden become calm and mature, the angry become reasonable and good at reasoning, the work resistant become self reliant and motivated, the alienated become part of something bigger than themselves, -family, teams, businesses and communities.
They do this because teachers and coaches and all the other members of the village that work with parents to bring up and educate young people, generally work together and do a good job.
We expect hard decisions to be made about funding but not wrongheaded ones that take no account of the needs of young people and schools in this country.
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