1 week Ago By Greg Bruce
Two new curriculums require implementation this year, causing concerns about the rapid changes for teachers. Teachers face challenges with structured literacy and maths, lacking training and resources during term time. The ageing teacher population and better opportunities in Australia are leading to teacher shortages.
A teacher says a lack of planning and resources is creating stress in the classroom. As told to Greg Bruce. This year we’ve got two brand new curriculums.
We always got told it would be a refresh. It’s not a refresh at all. They practically got dumped on us, if you want to call it that, in October or November last year.
We did get to provide feedback for a week or two and then it was finalised. In my own opinion, I think they are great, but the problem is that every single school in New Zealand has to implement them this year and it’s just too much change all at once. Who’s teaching the teachers how to make all these changes all at once? We’ve all been told we have to implement structured literacy , which is a totally different way of teaching literacy, which teachers have never been taught, which includes reading, writing, spelling, handwriting.
And we’re not allowed to take training days in term time. So how do we upgrade 40,000 teachers without support? And it has to be during the school holidays. Providers can’t run workshops in the holidays for the whole country at the same time.
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