Us do opposite of all Earthly things! Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World

As I sit here today, having worked from home during NZ's Level 4 lockdown, along with my teaching colleagues, and now from the campus as we've transitioned to Level 3, I feel pretty good that education and teachers have been labelled 'essential services'.

Consider the fate of professional sportspeople in contrast. Not essential. Not employed.

Every night on the news for the last few weeks the Australian Rugby League (NRL) people have presented a comical soap opera of daft desperate decisions to restart their season.

Teachers have taught on, while overpaid big burley hirsute blokes* in shorts have become more and more impatient to get back to playing games of 'footy'.

* Very few news stories have focused on female sports teams in comparison.

As The Donald would say, 'SAD'.

And yet, in a few weeks time they will have their wish and be providing entertainment for the masses of Aussie and Nu Zild couch potatoes while underpaid teachers, the 'essential workers' remember, will continue their work in relative obscurity, and definitely in relative poverty.

It's a bizarro world!

The reasons why no one likes us!

Photo by Colin Rex on Unsplash

While painting the horse float during this Easter weekend, my wife (a nurse) and I discussed a range of stimulating subjects. Along the way we spit balled reasons why we our professions are so disrespected.

Here I modestly present our theories regarding why the teaching and nursing professions have never been valued as they should be (and therefore why skinflint governments don't pay up). 

As my wife is never wrong, you should sit up straight and pay attention:

1 The if-you-can't-teach... myth. This perverse notion has, at its core, the idea that if you don't quite have the chops then you can teach others. Think of tennis or golf coaches or music critics - very few, if any, were stars in their own right.

2 The old uniforms. Cartoon shorthand for teachers is a pompous old git wearing a batman cape and mortar board and nurses: a stout women in a heavily starched nun-like white outfit with an origami headpiece - you know what I mean. This bizarre get up has no relationship to reality but it makes us a figure of fun and therefore, something that can't be taken seriously. 

3 It's not a real job. Anyone can do it. Unlike say doctors, chemists, pilots, and computer software engineers, the popular perspective on teachers and nurses by older generations (okay - our fathers) was and is that taking on life in a service career is akin to dressing up and playing house.

4 There's no money in it so, why, you know, would anyone want to do a lowly perceived job for crap money. Instead - become a professional sportsperson and earn quadrillions. The altruistic impulse to battle it out in an under-resourced environment like a school or a hospital seems glamorous in comparison huh.

5 We're always on holiday. It cheeses people off. So teachers are lazy and should work harder. And be grateful for the allowance they get.

6 Glorified nannies. At heart, teachers look after children and that generalised stigma applies to nurses as well. They look after us when we're sick - like our mums do. These stereotypes persist deep in the psyche.

7 Teachers are trendy lefties: long haired, bearded, pipe smoking, sandals wearing tree huggers. That image has legs. 

And so the perceptions continue. Perceptions are hideous blue meanies - hard to battle, and the poor pay continues, unless you happen to live in Finland that is. Ah, Finland...

Bottom line: So, because we're not valued, is it any wonder that NZ is desperately short of attracting men and women to nursing or teaching?

The teacher is teachin' the Golden Rule (Chuck Berry)

This photo appeared recently in the Guardian Weekly. The caption read: Palestinian girls attend a class at a school that witnesses said was damaged by Israeli shelling during the most recent conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza City.

I love this photo.

Yes, it shows girls persevering with their learning in horrendous circumstances- but it also looks normal- just look at the expressions on the girls' faces as they focus, and I love the idea that a hand up to get the teacher's attention is a global phenomenon. 

Yes, amazingly, it shows how a classroom can somehow become a target in a battle between opposing forces.

But my biggest YES moment? The teacher!

I am so full of admiration for this anonymous woman who is bravely leading the way in outrageous circumstances. It makes me proud to be in the same profession as her.

I couldn't help comparing this to my classroom and the girls I teach at Woodford House, and the staff I teach with.

I love the place and the people at the school and I don't want to become complacent. I know I need a reminder from time to time of how lucky I am to be here.

I have seen similar places to that in the photo and worked with similar students and teachers - people who have no resources except for their will, integrity, knowledge and, most importantly, their imagination.

I love this photo for giving me a window into a parallel teaching/learning world.