This Is What a Teacher Shortage Looks Like When You Zoom All the Way In

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 flu/COVID-type thing has wreaked havoc in our community for weeks. Today it exhausted the supply. Today we did not have enough teachers and there were no more relievers or LATs left in our pool. There is no agency up the road with waiting lists of people wanting to be teachers. We have advertised jobs, that still remain vacant, all year.

My trauma class of four weeks was just getting used to its surroundings, just beginning to understand workflow and calm. The roaming had reduced. The shouting had softened. Children were beginning to trust the routines. For the first time, the room we had built was becoming somewhat predictable and safe. But today, as five new trauma-affected children entered their realm from another class without a teacher, the work untied itself in an instant.

It was more than just a messy day!

By morning tea I had phoned five whānau and exhausted the senior leadership strategies of consequences. They simply could not share their new surroundings, or the teacher who stayed, with anyone.

Teasing, fighting, cruel names, mocking, broken pencils and cut-in-half rubbers all reared their ugly heads again. Fight-and-flight mode took over. It became a battle of wills.

My teacher aide had been sick for over a week. My autistic student had no support and went roaming to a more stable classroom searching for quiet. My sense of humour had well and truly left the building by 11am.

Mamma bears were called in to take their children home so they could reset.

You name it, it happened.

We addressed it.

The learning?

The lesson plans?

The knowledge-rich curriculum?

Buried.

This is what teacher shortages look like in real classrooms.

The shortage is simply not just an empty chair at a staff meeting. It is not only a persistent vacancy notice in the Gazette. It is not a statistic on a journalist's laptop, or even a government briefing paper.

It actually looks like real children losing the real stability they have spent weeks building.

Apparently, 146 Northland primary and secondary schools are predicted to face teacher shortages, with a projected shortfall of 120 teachers. A supply gap of 4.5% in primary schools and 4% in secondary schools.

The report calls it a supply gap. I suppose that is one way to describe it. Another way would be real children wondering why the room they had finally begun to trust no longer felt safe at all. The same thing was happening across all of our classes. Maybe a little less extreme, but just as disastrous.

This is what teacher shortages look like in real classrooms.

One teacher left crying today — not me, for a change. Not because the job was too hard, or because they were afraid of being run down and overwhelmed, but because of the level of trauma these children carry. Today, with just a small change to their classroom, it plastered itself across the room like a billboard.

We often talk about teacher wellbeing as though it is separate from student wellbeing. It isn't. Watching children hurt is what hurts us. When you see a once-settled class implode because something changed in their world; the anger, the frustration, the drama, the pack behaviour, it is enough to destroy the soul.

Our tank is empty.

Our pool is empty.

The consequence?

Some of us may choose to leave again. Some of us are likely to call in sick the next day. But, if I am lucky, they will show up tomorrow.