The Tighter They Grip, The Less We Can Respond

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 in my to do list back to back, my inbox is feral, and my brain honestly cannot take one more acronym, framework, rollout or “strategic direction”.

Then I read this.

An Amendment Paper filed quietly at the edge of the night proposing the Teaching Council lose elected teacher representation entirely, while Ministers gain more power over curriculum direction.

And honestly?

I think people outside schools underestimate how deeply this stuff eventually reaches into classrooms and then into the kaiako’s souls. Because every time systems become tighter, more controlled, more politically directed, less room is left for actual human response.

I do not teach robots or photo shopped compliance kids. I teach traumatised kids.

Kids who roam because school has never felt safe enough to stay still.

Kids who swear at you before 9am because anger is easier than attachment.

Kids who need sensory breaks before they can write a sentence.

Kids who carry grief into maths.

Kids who laugh loudly because underneath it all they are still children trying to survive being children.

And the work required to hold those tamariki cannot always be Stanfordised.

Usually, good teaching looks messy.

Frequenlty, it looks like abandoning the lesson because regulation matters more.

Sometimes it looks like splitting a class because relationships matter more than the gossip.

Most days it looks like sitting beside a child for forty minutes before they trust you enough to even pick up a pencil.

Honestly, it looks like knowing that the child throwing the chair is also the child who made sure their little sister got on the bus this morning.

That work requires professional judgement.

It requires flexibility.It requires trust.

But education feels like it is moving further and further toward control instead.

More monitoring.

More intervention.

More people far away from classrooms deciding what classrooms should look like.

The tighter they grip the system, the harder it becomes for us to respond properly to the children inside it.

That’s what scares me.

Because trauma-informed practice cannot exist properly inside environments where everyone feels increasingly watched, measured and politically managed.

Children affected by trauma do not need adults trapped inside rigid systems desperately trying to tick boxes before they respond with humanity. They need real educators with enough space to think, adapt, soften, pivot and respond in the moment.

Tonight I know teachers are tired.

I know some of you are reading this while half doing tomorrow’s planning. Some of you still have reports open. Some of you are lying in bed doom scrolling because your nervous system forgot how to switch off five weeks ago.

But I am asking you anyway.

Please say something.

Even if it’s messy.

Even if it’s angry.

Even if it’s only three sentences.

Even if you use AI to help structure it because your brain is cooked.

Just make sure the whakaaro inside it is yours.

Email: hello@aec.org.nz

Because if enough exhausted teachers stay silent, people will assume we are comfortable with this direction.

And I don’t think we are.