by Rebecca Thomas A once-settled class implodes While for readers of The Sunday Times and The Post, "Where is Everybody?" was just another story, to me and my community it was our story. The impact of teacher shortages has always been there, niggling away as we use LATs to plug the seeping holes, reduce our release time, and gift days owed to each other to those teachers drowning the most. Despite that, today we resorted to a reluctant class split for the day. This dreaded fl

by Rebecca Thomas Tuakana teaching Teina the feelings of the classroom Funny thing. School has become my shield. The ecosystem of a school has built a kind of natural armour around me. It protects me from the tug-of-war politics, Ministry battles and the blue glow of social media that follows me into the darkness. Facebook has become an algorithm of outrage. Racism. Bias. Power struggles. Endless declarations about who is right and who is wrong. Every day I scroll past posts

by Rebecca Thomas It's fair to say that today I felt slightly insane. "Insane" was how I replied to my cleaner when she asked how my day had been. Admittedly, I was coaching and mentoring a beginning teacher in the moment whilst they observed my reading lesson, whilst simultaneously having a trainee teacher observing me at the same time. Amongst all of this, my students were trying to cope with their teacher having side conversations about best practice with two humans at com

by Rebecca Thomas I will admit it. When I saw the latest honours list I felt uncomfortable. Perhaps even disappointed. Hey, maybe a little shocked. As I looked through the names, I found myself wondering what exactly we honour in education these days. Do we honour influence? Access to Ministerial ears? The ability to shape policy from afar? The power to decide what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts? The ability to mould governments and narratives? Because if that

Or perhaps more politely: A budget lovingly crafted for the boardroom enlightened. by Rebecca Thomas This is the childhood they survived. This is who we teach. I tried to keep the title polite. But the 2026 Education Budget is enough to make many real classroom teachers sit quietly at their desks after school wondering how our honest descriptions of real classrooms can continuously be ignored. Underneath the glossy headlines and million-dollar figures sits a very clear messag

by Rebecca Thomas Tetris gave me all the wrong pieces! Reporting to whānau using our newly acquired criteria has never felt so dull. Mid-year reports are due for the first time in the new Stanfordised format (that word is now in my online dictionary). And in almost thirty years of teaching I have found myself staring blankly at the screen feeling absolutely disconnected from the child I am supposedly writing about. Not because I do not know them. I actually know them deeply.

By Rebecca Thomas Teachers were never meant to be puppets What use is a knowledge rich, internationally benchmarked package when there are no humans left to teach it? On the typical Friday drive home a friend’s curious question got me thinking. Why don’t we have anyone applying for jobs at our school? This is the third set of job adverts this term and honestly, I don’t count two applications for three jobs in 2026 as a win anymore. At first I believed it was down to our commu

by Rebecca Thomas Exhausted, but this is necessary! I’m sitting here tonight absolutely knackered. Really exhausted. It’s not even Wednesday and I can’t begin to tell you how my day started with upturned chairs and tables and a brother and sister who have taken it upon themselves to try and help their severely autistic sister settle on a bus ride. This was before 9am. Taumata. I still haven’t mentally left today’s behaviour incidents, tomorrow’s meetings are already sitting i

by Rebecca Thomas My SMART data for my class of thirteen trauma-affected students tells me everything I need to know about this new (not new) NCEA replacement announcement. When you spend every day inside a real classroom with children whose lives do not fit inside assessment rubrics, phased expectations, attendance percentages, or national consistency measures, you start realising how little these systems actually understand about the future they are trying to control. The c

by ELV My Kids Taught Me This How do you make tamariki who don’t trust adults, learn to stay? When you split a trauma class that had bonded more deeply to each other than they ever had to the adults around them, the experiment begins. Monday Multiple roaming ākonga. In and out of rooms. Hands slapping together in loud “wassup” greetings every time a familiar face passed the window. Kids halfway through tasks suddenly pulled by the gravity of each other again. I spy the pack b

by ELV Supporting students is ‘wasteful spending’… until the country starts wondering why all its graduates left. Nicola Willis has now confirmed that 2026 will be the final year of the fees-free university scheme. Just like that. A scheme thousands of students planned their futures around is now being scrapped, after years of telling young people that relief would come at the end of their studies. And I genuinely cannot get over the hypocrisy of this Government anymore. We w

by ELV It is truly fascinating watching Erica Stanford attempt to simultaneously be: the calm listener, the unstoppable reformer, the misunderstood genius, the victim of “wild claims,” and the only adult brave enough to “fix” education… all before morning tea. Honestly, it’s becoming less Minister of Education and more Jekyll and Hyde Minister. One minute we are told: “We’re listening carefully to feedback.” The next: “People clearly haven’t even read the curriculum.” One min

by Rebecca Thomas I was staring at the stained artex ceiling of a tired 70s conference room, trying to gather something that looked like enthusiasm for my third Ministry PLD session of Term 2. But my default setting — the one that scans quietly for risk, for impact, for what this will mean for the tamariki sitting in front of me tomorrow — was already wide awake. Mentioning Australia in the first ten minutes wasn’t ideal. Not because Australia is the problem, but because we a

By Rebecca Thomas The Island We Taught On I don’t think people understand what has been lost, because what has been lost was never easily written down in the first place. It didn’t live in policy or frameworks or tidy progressions. It lived in the feeling of a day that unfolded the way learning is meant to — slow where it needed to be slow, expansive where it needed to be expansive, and always, always anchored in the lives of the tamariki in front of you. When I first came t

by Rebecca Thomas Ginny — will you listen? As the change of government begins to gather pace again, I’ll be honest — I feel uneasy. Many of us grew familiar with Willow-Jean Prime and the deliberate way she sought to stand alongside an exhausted workforce. She worked to understand it — not perfectly, but visibly. And now, we are left with Ginny Andersen. I don’t know her well. And maybe that’s part of the problem. Because from where I stand — I’m not yet convinced she fully

By Rebecca Thomas Herald News: Education leaders unite against curriculum shake-up, urge delay Oh my goodness… what a surprise. Surprised. Erica Stanford says she is “genuinely surprised” by claims from the sector — surprised about resourcing, surprised about pressure, surprised at the pushback. How can you be surprised… when the so-called “noisy” sector hasn’t exactly been whispering? All along this hasn’t been a quiet murmur tucked away in staffrooms between bells. Instead,

by ELV Prepare. Don’t panic. I have to say — I admire the consistency. For the past two years, we’ve watched a masterclass in how to create a crisis in our education system. Reading levels are dropping while writing isn’t where it should be. International comparisons get pulled out — PISA suddenly becomes dinner table conversation. It’s urgent our kids are failing. The education system is in trouble. Then comes the solution. Back to basics with structured approaches, an hour

by Rebecca Thomas Many of us watched the live proceedings of the Waitangi Tribunal this week. Not half-listening while the day moved on around us. But properly. The kind of listening you have to do that makes you stop what you’re doing. Although nothing shared was new, hearing it gathered — all at once, in one space — was deeply confronting. As kaiako, as leaders, as those who walk alongside our tamariki each day, we were not shocked. Because if you know your history, this st

by ELV I’ve been sent screenshots from Auckland group pages this week. Feeds that suddenly have a lot to say about our schools, our teachers, and our people. If you look at what is happening up north to Mayor Moko Tepania this event is not isolated. It is not random. And it is not harmless. It is social media being used to shape perception. FNDC Mayor Moko has been victimised. And I am proud he has stood up to the kind of rhetoric that leans into division, into race, into che

by ELV From our Minister's mouth Why is it acceptable for our Minister of Education to accuse the profession of “fudging numbers” — while reshaping the narrative herself? Because that’s what happened this week. On Mike Hosking Breakfast, the Minister dismissed concern about the SMART tool as: “a bumbling attempt at some kind of weird political hit job” She accused the sector — including the Aotearoa Educators Collective and Liam Rutherford — of “fudging the numbers.” That’s