Schools are under immense pressure at the moment and that has flow-on affects for student teachers. (Image: Tina Tiller)
The situation in classrooms is tumultuous, but what does that mean for those about to join the profession?
School staffing shortages have been making headlines in recent months, with pandemic pressures and winter illness putting additional pressure on schools. Calls for mask mandates in classrooms and a focus on our dwindling reliever pool have garnered much of the attention. The solution, it would seem, is to train more teachers.
Teacher graduate numbers have actually risen over the last two years after a decade of decline. But the experience of current student teachers suggests the system may be putting them off a teaching career before they even land their first permanent position.
Abby* is an Auckland-based student teacher in her 30s. She’s studying the year-long graduate diploma of teaching at the University of Auckland which will see her entering the high-school teaching workforce next year, and hopefully help to ease the staffing shortage. But the rising cost of living, a lack of financial and practical support and a stretched teaching workforce are making her first experiences in the classroom particularly challenging. “We all started off incredibly idealistic,” she says “[but] there’s so many of us this year who have been really disenchanted by the entire thing.”
A substantial part of that struggle is financial. “I’m privileged because I have iwi support and family support,” says Abby, “but even I’m struggling.” Abby lives off around $400 each week. That’s made up by the $$242.53 maximum student loan living costs (which need to be paid back), the five or six hours she works in the evenings and slivers of an iwi grant from earlier in the year. Of that, $270 goes to rent at the flat she shares with two flatmates, and her weekly petrol cost hovers around $60. When things get really tight financially, her parents can “every now and then spot me a bit of money”, but “I’m really good at budgeting,” she says. Despite that, she says, “I’m fast running out of savings that I use to bolster my weekly income for food and other expenses”.
The rising cost of living, lack of financial and practical support and a stretched teaching workforce are making the student teacher experience challenging. (Photo: Getty Images)
At the start of the year, Abby remembers a lecturer saying half the people in the course wouldn’t make it to the end. Already expecting the year would be hard work, she said to herself, “I hope it’s not me”. But alongside the pressure of relentless course work, the stress surrounding her latest placement left Abby seriously considering dropping out of the diploma. “I was saying I don’t know if I have it in me to stick with it and I don’t know if I can afford to do it. I don’t know if I’m emotionally able to, I was just so tired,” she says.
In addition to taking courses on campus and online, student teachers spend part of their studies working in schools. Known as “practicum”, this period of around two months are spent working alongside a registered teacher in classrooms. During practicum, students take over increasingly large parts of the teacher role, until they’re able to teach and plan alone for several weeks. Essentially, practicums give practical experience to the role of teacher while still being guided and supervised. They’re seen as a vital part of learning to be an educator.
The in-school practicums start with an eight-week block at one school and then at another school later in the course for seven more weeks. During these periods, student teachers are at school from 8am to 4pm, five days a week. “It’s like a full time job without pay,” says Abby. In fact, given the student fees, it’s a full time job where you’re actually paying to be there.
While Abby agrees that practicum is a vital part of teacher education, she thinks there’s a lack of recognition for how those hourly demands limit other paid work necessary to supplement income, as well as the ability to make appointments, such as for doctors or to renew drivers licenses.
Abby’s latest placement has made things even harder. Students are supposed to be placed in practicum schools near where they live. But the school where Abby is currently working is nearly 30km from her flat. It means her $60 weekly petrol spend has been bumped up to around $100, cutting her food budget down by more than half. Supermarket vouchers from the university are the only thing covering the gap.
Practicum experience is vital for student teachers. (Photo: Getty Images)
Although Abby made a request to shift to a school closer to home after being given just over a week’s notice of her placement location, the university wasn’t able to find an alternative. And she says it’s a problem shared across her cohort. “The fact they dropped on us that we’re going to be in completely different areas, has thrown a lot of people. Everyone has been scrambling to try and finance the cost of petrol,” she says.
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The problem is that fewer schools are signing up to take on practicum students so there are fewer options overall. Abby explains that the options are constrained by the staff shortages in schools driven by Covid-19. Taking on practicum students isn’t a solution to staffing shortages for schools, rather the mentoring requirements places additional pressure on already limited staff capacity. For some schools it is an added responsibility that they just can’t take on right now. That situation coincides with Abby’s experience of finding that those teachers supervising practicums have very little time to spare for training.
School teachers are an essential part of our workforce and society so learning to be an educator shouldn’t be a walk in the park, explains Abby. But she believes that in the pathway to becoming one, pressure should come from the learning rather than simply inadequate support. The tangle of obstacles to make it through the course has left Abby doubting the reasons she made the decision to become a teacher in the first place, and she wonders how accessible the degree is to people who don’t have additional financial support. “It’s an unpaid internship so only a certain subsection of society can actually afford to do it,” which, she says means, “the pool of incoming teachers is less diverse.”
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Like her student colleagues, Abby wanted to train to become a teacher because she believed she could make a genuine difference. “We’re all there for the right reasons, we’re all there because we want to affect change in the future, we want to encourage critical thinkers, we want to encourage kind members of society,” she says.
Weighing on her future aspirations is a feeling of worry. It’s the worry that her experiences throughout the course are just a taste of what’s to come later as a fully-fledged teacher.
“It’s the right people that are going into it, but they’re getting burnt out,” she says. “If student teachers are getting burnt out before they even join the profession, what hope do we have for when we’re teachers?”
What’s driving the growing number of women upsizing their breasts?
Lucy* had breathed deeply through the anaesthetic mask and tried to count to 10. When she woke up, her once “completely flat” chest held a pair of E cup boobs. They were bandaged and zipped into a compression garment, but when she looked in the mirror, she remembers thinking, “Oh my god, I love it. They’re ginormous.”
But Lucy felt like she had been hit by a bus. She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t stand up. And certainly couldn’t go to the bathroom. “I didn’t understand how invasive it would be,” she says, “it was so nuts.” For two weeks it was “gnarly” and she needed to be nursed. Then she needed a wheelchair. For four weeks she couldn’t drive or dress herself, because she couldn’t lift her arms.
We talk about “boob jobs” a bit flippantly, forgetting they are relatively major surgical procedures to healthy bodies. Having one means making a lifelong commitment to breast surgery, as the implants will almost certainly need replacing, ideally every 10 years. Lucy’s isn’t a horror story either. She was lucky. There were no complications and she healed well. Her only ongoing issue is a weakened pectoral muscle on her left side.
More and more women around the world are choosing to get bigger boobs. In the latest global statistics released by the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, breast augmentation (implants) was the most popular procedure for women, with 1,601,713 undergoing this surgery in 2020. While this is a 9.5% drop from 2019, the deficit is more than accounted for by Covid disruptions – cosmetic procedures overall dropped almost 11%. Interestingly, breast reductions were down by a whole lot more – 29%.
In Aotearoa, the numbers are less clear. “No one knows exactly how much cosmetic surgery is being performed in New Zealand, as national statistics for the industry are not collected,” reads the NZ Association of Plastic Surgeons’ website. It appears neither the industry nor the Ministry of Health has bothered to count. Perhaps it is considered too frivolous to be of importance. Yetthe association acknowledges there has been a “big rise” over the past decade.
Lucy had been dissatisfied with her natural breasts for years before thinking “Fuck it, I’m getting my tits done!” She was young, 23, and felt free and brave. Perhaps even reckless. Lucy’s boyfriend was “not into it” and told her so. “’I don’t care, I’ll be hot,” she told him, “Don’t worry about it, it’s not your concern.” She laughs. The rest sounds like a bit of a whirlwind: an internet search, taking out a personal loan, flying to Thailand, meeting the surgeon, and a week later, flying home with a changed body. For Lucy, taking control of her breasts felt empowering. “It was something I was doing for me,” she says, “I wanted to feel more feminine.”
Six years later, Lucy sends me, a very breast-curious journalist, before and after pictures. The pink cherry blossom emojis covering her nipples seem to be the only consistent feature between the two images.
Photo: Getty Images
The second wave of feminism, which rose and gathered momentum through the 60s to the 80s, fought against the renewed domesticity of women after the war. The 50s housewife transformed into the powersuit-wearing businesswoman of the 80s. They rejected traditional femininity, instead padding their shoulders to mimic the male physique.
But feminist movements have continually shifted. The 2020s has seen femininity wholeheartedly embraced by trashy, pink trends. There was Bimboism, now there is Barbiecore. Powersuits have made way for pink velour tracksuits, shiny acrylic nails and obvious artificiality. Puffed up lips aren’t trying to look natural, and neither are big perky breasts. Instead, femininity is shown to be “fake” – a product of money, labour, performance and culture. And it is celebrated.
Senior sociology lecturer Dr Carisa Showden sits in front of a wall of books. She’s Zooming me from her sunlit home office, but can usually be found quoting Cher in gender studies lectures at Auckland University. Showden sees these new trends as following on from third wave feminism, a reclaiming and doubling down on feminimity, to value it and re-imagine what it could be. “What we hope feminism means,” she says, “is that we don’t need, or want, to be just like men.”
As we speak, our own faces are played back to us. Small yet ever present. For Showden, the thing that’s “kinda great” is the refusal of naturalisation – the pink, glittery acrylic nails that point to the artifice of it all. “The artificiality embraces the fact that of course it’s work,” she says, “It is really drawing attention to these sort of ideals that we got through magazines, through television shows, through Tiktok, through Instagram, through advertising – and refusing to pretend that there aren’t expectations on us about how we are supposed to look. Showing that work is an effort to push back.”
“They’re quite obviously fake,” says Lucy of her breasts. “Anyone can tell.” On her Instagram, perhaps our most public construct of identity, she is just about always smiling, and just about always at the beach in a bikini. She has been “super open” about her surgery from the start. Given the transformation, and the new size of her breasts, “people were gonna notice, there was no way I could hide it”.
Lucy noticed too. Her new boobs changed the way she viewed herself. “I couldn’t stop looking in the mirror,” she says, “I was like ‘amazing, I’m so hot’, which is such a contrast to how I viewed myself before.”
To my eye, her boobs are big, but not unbelievably so. Perhaps because I’m persistently bombarded by surgically and digitally altered bodies, my grip on reality is a bit skewed. Still, there are obvious artificial boobs around – usually on Instagram. Someone I follow was inspired by Pamela Anderson to augment her breasts. She often wears a t-shirt with the slogan “I ❤️ Big Boobs”. It isn’t just the boobs, but also long blonde hair extensions, eyelashes like Bambi, over the top manicures and lips that look like they’re straining to contain the fillers. All wonderfully fake.
For Showden though, artificiality seems to be coming up short of its revolutionary potential. “It tends to look a lot like what femininity has always looked like – recouping certain features that have been imposed historically. Reinforcing that high emphasis on embodiment, especially through breasts, or the hourglass figure. They are standardised figures that get re-trawled.” Instead of expanding femininity, or breaking down the gender binary, these aesthetics seem to magnify traditional constraints. Why do the new femininities regurgitate old patriarchal images?
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There is a lot to be gained through breast augmentation. Many women report an improved quality of life. They feel more popular and respected after breast augmentations. They apparently have more, and better, job prospects. Insecurity and shame, which once pervaded sexual encounters, give way to confidence. There are psychological, social and economic gains to be had through enlarging one’s breasts. Perhaps these women aren’t victims, they’re savvy.
Having tens of thousands of dollars to spend on cosmetic surgery allows some to buy individual empowerment, but can reinforce oppressive norms. It would be hard to find anyone who doesn’t put effort into their appearance. Almost all women have a bra which, apart from offering support, volumises, lifts, and reshapes breasts in much the same way an augmentation does.
There is always pressure to look a certain way. Sometimes it’s explicit. Lucy was told (by men) that she would be more attractive with bigger boobs, and these comments reinforced feelings she already had. “Sometimes,” she says, “when I start thinking about the concept of having surgery to change the shape of your body to appear a certain way, or make yourself feel a certain way, it is quite bizarre.” It’s a sentiment she expresses multiple times. The conflict between her freely-made choice and its influencing factors will perhaps never be resolved. Breast augmentation is a complex negotiation.
Our bodies though, don’t exist only as fodder for feminist musings. They are flesh and bones and blood. Surgery is a physical trauma, and breast augmentation is not without its dangers and side effects. You are, after all, slicing through skin and muscle, then shoving a synthetic foreign object inside and stitching the wound shut.
The body isn’t always happy about having synthetic foreign objects inside it. According to the US Food & Drug Administration, 20% of women who have had breast augmentation will need to have an implant removed within 8-10 years. Within 18 years, 69% of implants will rupture. Sometimes, the body forms a hard scar tissue around the implants, known as capsular contracture, which can be painful and cause deformities. The risk of capsular contracture is up to 81% for silicon implants, and 41% for saline filled implants. Breast Implant Illness, little-understood and not clinically recognised, is experienced by many women. It appears to be an autoimmune response to the implants, causing fatigue, cognitive problems, burning pain, dry eyes, anxiety and joint pain. Studies show that after having implants removed, 69-89% of patients feel better. The immune system responding to implants can also cause lymphoma, a cancer. This is rare, the worst possible risk is estimated to be one in every 2,207women with textured implants. Still, cancer is cancer.
More commonly, women experience trouble breastfeeding, up to 12% report changes to nipple sensation, and 11% experience ongoing breast pain. And, as with any surgery, there is the risk of blood clots, bleeding, infection, injury, and pain
These statistics are extremely off-putting, and either buried deep or not found at all on surgeons’ websites. The reality is that many women end up with damaged bodies as a result of seeking a certain form of femininity. Many will never be properly informed, or, by the time they are, they’re in a consultation. Lucy says “it was kinda too late by then.” She, like many others, had already made her decision. She had already been promised by her surgeon’s website that her self esteem, silhouette and proportions could be made “better”.
Veronica Hopner’s office is reminiscent of a doctor’s consultation room, although she is the other, more bookish, type of doctor. On the shelves are leather-bound volumes with her name foiled in gold on the spines. Outside, the Albany campus of Massey University is quiet, students are on break. Neither cosmetic surgery nor feminism are Hopner’s areas of experise, but she was so curious about why women choose to have risky surgery on their healthy bodies, that she ended up writing a thesis on it.
She was fascinated by the feminist discourse around artificiality and empowerment she read in academic journals, but it was nowhere to be seen on New Zealand-based cosmetic surgeons’ websites. Instead, breast augmentation is being sold to women on the basis that it is a solution to deficiency. Breasts considered too small, too saggy, or too far apart, too flat, or in some other way normal and natural, can be “fixed” by surgery. In before and after pictures – the before could look like just about anything, whereas the “after” were standardised – breasts that were large (but not too large), firm, full, and rather upright. A demanding standard, impossible to achieve without augmentation.
It’s here we encounter the majority of thinking around breast augmentation. It isn’t the desire to look artificial, or to point out femininity as constructed. These are rare exceptions. It is instead the proliferation of the idea that natural bodies aren’t good enough, and should be “fixed” through surgery. Breasts though, should still look “natural”. These messages are lightly veiled in nice phrases: “compliment your figure”, “a natural look and feel is achieved”, “balance the proportion between the breast and body”. The obsession with sticking to the natural is so extreme that one surgeon claims “breasts are naturally enlarged” by liposuctioning fat from elsewhere on the body and injecting it into the breasts.
I wanted to ask cosmetic surgeons what women who came to them were looking for when asking for breast augmentations.Of the 10 surgeons I contacted, only one was willing to talk to me. They were a woman, though the vast majority of surgeons are men. While she does perform augmentations, she prefers “implants” which “look natural”. She seemed concerned for women who choose large implants, as they can cause more complications.To her, breast augmentation shouldn’t be conspicuous. Rather, it should be minor alterations only for women who “lacked” breasts. This is the norm for augmented breasts – rarely spoken about, and passing as natural.
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Turns out, the joyously artificial breast is rare among breast augmentations – it’s just the most obvious and visible. For Showden, these breasts can work against enforced norms. Even if cosmetic surgery can never be fully liberating, it holds the potential to make us think creatively and critically about norms and expectations. “Taking joy in [augmentation] is probably non-normative,” she says. “I would say in this day and age, taking pleasure in things is the most resistant and non-normative thing you can do.”
In the final photo Lucy sends me, she’s free of the compression garment. The bandages are off. The sky is a bright blue, and the sand under her toes dark. Wind blows hair over half her face, but doesn’t hide her smile. In this photo, I can see the outline of the implants under her tan lines.
Visibility comes with a price. Lucy doesn’t regret her big boobs, “I just loooove my tits so much,” she says. But she’s scared of the inevitable next surgery, and there have been times she wasn’t sure if she’d made a good decision. Men have been forward with their opinions about them, willing to say to her, “oh, I don’t like that.” She has felt stigmatised, whereas before she was judged for having a flat chest. It seems, she says, “we just can’t win”.
* Name has been changed
Gabi Lardies is a cadet in the Next Page cadetship programme, public interest journalism funded through NZ On Air.