Principal Anthony Weir was presented with his 40-year IEU member gift at IEU Council on 17 June. Anthony is the Sydney Catholic Schools Rep on the IEU Principals’ Sub Branch. Here he reflects on the changes he has witnessed during his many years in education.
Forty years ago, I wore brown trousers, a short sleeve shirt and a tie for my first day of teaching. Having just completed my initial teaching degree I was confident I could write neatly on a chalkboard and design interesting stencils which I could run off on the Fordigraph machine.
The year was divided into three terms, some of which lasted 15 weeks. Smokers sat at one end of the staffroom table and the program for the year was handwritten on foolscap sheets and stored in a ring binder. I remember the smiles on the children’s faces on that very first day. Little did they know how nervous I was!
Fashion trends changed over the years as ‘professional dress’ became a thing. Smokers left the building and then the school grounds and are now seldom seen anywhere near a school. The chalkboard was replaced by the whiteboard which teachers described as ‘slippery’ to write on, after years of chalkboard scratchings.
The first computers began arriving in schools five years after I started teaching. Our school purchased six computers. The operating system as well as the applications were contained on a floppy disk which was inserted into the machine. The monochrome monitor made for very simple graphics and printing was churned out on paper with removable edges which were full of holes.
In my first 10 years I don’t remember a principal or leadership team member coming into my classroom unless there was an urgent message. The Basic Skills Test, the forerunner to NAPLAN, hadn’t arrived until my seventh year of teaching. It was introduced to assist parents and we were promised that league tables would never be used against teachers or schools.
Parents rarely complained (even though there were some instances when they should have)! Staff knew little about what happened in anyone else’s classroom as there was no release time for planning. Staff meetings were held once a week with staff nominating a list of topics they wanted to discuss. It wasn’t until I had been in a leadership role for some time that my principal began suggesting we needed to visit classrooms and actually see what was happening in them.
By the time I had become an assistant principal, mobile phones were becoming a necessity, leaders visited classrooms and release from face-to-face teaching had been introduced. Programs now bulged out of lever arch files and parents had become much more interested in ‘where their child was’ in the classroom not their seat, but their ranking!
As a beginning principal 20 years ago, mobile phones were a must. It was probably the first time I considered wearing a suit to work. Strategic planning, annual planning and individualised performance goal setting had all become commonplace. Just over half of the nation had access to the internet.
Targets came, milestones and ‘check-ins’ became the norm as school systems grew to support the ever-increasing scrutiny of school business. Meetings increased as did the need to take a greater role in the wellbeing of the children, the staff and in some cases, the families. Looking to the future, the emergence of artificial intelligence will be another opportunity for growth as we look to maximise its potential.
I visit classrooms often and ensure I am rostered on supervision duty. Children continue to smile and bring me great joy as I watch them grow and develop. Even though 40 years have brought many changes, that joy of being a teacher has never waned.