My Nose Knows I Blew It. A Rough time To Be A Teacher.

[Aussie105]

36. Couple of comments from a distance.

Context: Australian general classroom teacher for 40 years, retired for 13.

1. Your employer is legally obliged to provide a safe and supporting working environment.
If you are subject to student initiated violence, file the appropriate reports and nothing changes, then your employer is negligent.

EDIT: In Australia, you file report on an incident involving violence. If you want to bother.
It gets sent to head office.
Freedom of information means any reporter can look at the accumulated numbers, and write a report to go on page 12 of whatever media they work for, if they care enough.
Not a solution to the problem.

2. Teaching is a challenge. Can you make a difference?
Initially you think you can.
But that idea, that need to effectively martyr yourself for the job, the feeling you need to try harder and take on more, eventually fades.
And you realize that no, you have not and cannot make a difference.

EDIT: Inclusion doesn't work, just an effort to hide the problem and make teaching harder.

3. Self preservation, looking after yourself, your family.
After retiring a lot of past events in the job came floating to the surface.
Traumatic events and bad situations I thought I had gotten over and moved past.
I had not, just locked them away.

I also realized that during my working years I severely neglected my family.
Something I will regret for the rest of my life.

May you fare better.

EDIT: I feel better now. Took the better part of my retirement years to resurface as a confident and capable human being who values his own existence, independent of the rest of the world.