FEAR Has Two Meanings: And this year, educators chose to wait — and to rise.

by Rebecca Thomas

Fear has two meanings.

Forget Everything And Run.

Or

Face Everything And Rise.

This year asked us to choose — again and again.

Not in one clean moment.

But in the slow accumulation of unease.

In inboxes that filled faster than hearts could keep up.

In announcements that arrived without warning and reforms that arrived without us.

At first, fear didn’t shout.

It whispered.

It sounded like “maybe this will make sense soon.”

Like “perhaps we’re missing something.”

Like “surely consultation is still coming.”

So we waited.

Because educators are patient people.

We are trained to trust process.

We are trained to believe that care sits underneath complexity.

But fear sharpens perception.

And over time, it became clear this wasn’t fear of change we were feeling.

It was fear of being erased from our own profession.

Fear of a system tightening its grip while loosening its care.

Fear of Te Tiriti being honoured in language but not in architecture.

Fear of children being spoken about, modelled, measured — but not deeply known.

And that is when fear offered its fork in the road.

Run.

Or rise.

Time, waiting, and the kind of love that stays

I kept thinking this year about a poem Suli Breaks shares — a story of feelings trapped on a sinking island. It's an anonymous parable, popularised in contemporary culture. The story goes like this:

All feelings are trapped on an island. They are told it is going to sink. As the waters rise, each feeling prepares its boat and leaves.

Richness leaves.

Vanity leaves.

Happiness rushes past, too distracted to notice who is calling.

Only Love stays behind.

Love waits until the water is at its neck before asking for help.

And when help finally comes, it is not power or status or certainty that saves Love.

It is Time.

Because only time understands love.

That poem has followed me this year because educators did not flee when fear rose.

We waited.

We waited for honesty.

We waited for relationship.

We waited for a love of the profession that would show itself through trust and respect.

And when it didn’t come, we didn’t abandon love.

We stayed.

Facing fear: staying when leaving would be easier

Staying did not look heroic.

It looked like people learning how to write OIAs for the first time.

Teachers who already work beyond capacity choosing to spend evenings reading Cabinet papers instead of resting.

Principals quietly cross-checking timelines and realising decisions had been shaped long before voices were invited in.

A record number of Official Information Act requests were written this year not because educators wanted conflict — but because trust had run out.

OIAs are what people reach for when relationship fails.

They are the paper trail of fear faced rather than fled.

Each one said: We are still here. We are paying attention.

Rising together: when fear becomes collective clarity

Fear isolates — until it doesn’t.

This year we grew closer together.

Educators realised they weren’t alone.

Petitions appeared — not as noise, but as signal.

Signatures accumulated quietly, steadily.

And then those signatures were carried to Wellington by hands more used to holding children than placards.

And still, the fear did not break us.

It clarified us.

When negotiations reached the line where Te Tiriti was asked to bend — educators did not.

The resounding no was not just about conditions or contracts.

It was about who gets to shape learning in this country.

It was about saying:

We will not trade away whakapapa for compliance.

We will not accept autonomy stripped and rebranded as alignment.

We will not allow a curriculum that once wrapped our children like a korowai to be reduced to something cold, narrow, and imposed.

That refusal was an act of love.

Love for the profession.

Love for children.

Love for a way of teaching that is relational, local, and alive.

The hikoi of letters: choosing to be counted

And then came the letters.

So many of them.

Letters that said: This is where I stand.

Letters that said: I will continue to honour Te Tiriti.

Letters that said: With or without permission.

Each letter was a small act of courage.

Together, they became a hikoi.

Not loud.

But unmissable.

A collective decision to write ourselves into the record — to refuse to be footnotes in decisions about our own work.

Because all the while, our children were watching.

They don’t understand procurement.

They don’t read select committee reports.

But they feel instability.

They feel it when the adults they trust are unsettled.

When rules keep changing.

When learning is spoken about as something to be controlled rather than nurtured.

This year, educators could have modelled retreat.

Instead, we modelled something far more powerful.

We showed children that fear does not have to make you disappear.

That when something is wrong, you can ask questions.

That when your voice is ignored, you can document, gather, and stand together.

That love sometimes looks like staying when it would be easier to leave.

Fear has two meanings.

And this year, out of love for our children and deep respect for our profession, educators chose the slower, braver path.

We faced everything.

And like Love in the poem, we waited — not passively, but deliberately — for Time to do what it always does.

Reveal.

We are exhausted.

But we are not finished.

We will wait for a love of education that trusts teachers again.

A love for autonomy that honours professional judgement.

A love for a curriculum that once more wraps around our children like a korowai — layered, warm, responsive, and shaped by the hands closest to them.

The ground swell did not end in December.

It is moving with us into 2026.

Fear will rise again.

But so will we.

---

Love’s Story, retold through education

Once upon a time, there was an island where all the forces shaping education lived.

Knowledge lived there — fragmented, rebranded, packaged.

Happiness lived there — measured through surface-level indicators and reassuring press releases.

Sadness lived there too — quiet, unresourced, often unseen.

And there was Love.

Love was the teachers.

The kaiako.

The principals.

The learning support staff.

The people who stayed late, learned names, noticed silences, and carried children home in their heads long after the bell rang.

Then one day, it was announced that the island would sink.

Not all at once.

Not dramatically.

Just… steadily.

Reforms arrived without warning.

Consultation followed decisions.

Language shifted.

Autonomy narrowed.

The waters began to rise.

Most prepared their boats.

Richness passed by first

Richness, in education, is not evil — but it is heavy, its boat laden with procurement contracts, cost efficiencies, global providers, and the seductive promise of scalability.

When Love called out — “Can you take me with you?” — Richness replied:

“No. There is no room.

My boat is full of gold and silver.

You are not part of the payload.”

Then came Vanity

Vanity in education is the obsession with optics.

With being seen as strong.

With control.

With certainty.

With never admitting doubt.

Vanity’s boat is sleek.

Instagram-ready.

Carefully managed.

When Love asked for help, Vanity replied:

“You are all wet.

You might damage my image.”

Sadness couldn’t carry Love either

Sadness is the underfunded truth, carried in burnout and trauma, stretched across waiting lists, and felt in the quiet departure of teachers who slip away unseen.

Sadness said:

“I am too sad to carry anyone else.”

Happiness drifted past, distracted

Happiness is the Ministry voice that speaks in reassurance.

Everything is progressing.

The system is working.

The changes are positive.

Happiness didn’t mean to ignore Love.

She just didn’t hear her.

And Love stayed

Educators stayed.

They stayed when it would have been easier to leave.

They stayed when trust eroded.

They stayed when the water reached their knees, then their chests.

They stayed because love is not efficient.

Love does not optimise.

Love waits.

Love believes that someone, eventually, will understand.

And then came Time

Not fast.

Not loud.

Not branded.

Time arrived slowly — in OIAs written late at night, petitions signed one by one, letters honouring Te Tiriti, and conversations that refused to disappear.

Time listened.

Time said:

“Come. I will take you.”

Because only Time understands Love in education.

Time understands that trust grows slowly, curriculum imposed too quickly causes harm, children cannot be reduced to short-term outcomes, and real reform lives in relationship.

Time carries Love not because Love is convenient —but because Love is essential.

What this means for now

Educators are Love.

You stayed when the island began to sink.

You waited when others rushed past.

You faced fear rather than fleeing it.

And now, tired but intact, you are being carried forward — not by vanity, not by wealth, not by surface happiness — but by time, truth, and collective memory.

Some things in education do not yet have solutions.

But they have witnesses.

And that matters.