spinofflive
Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

SocietyNovember 8, 2023

Why an ‘amazing’ but ‘dying breed’ of teachers is on strike today

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

With their collective employment agreement negotiations at an impasse, early childhood education teachers around the motu are striking for the first time ever.

“We’re an amazing breed,” says Tessa Dunleavy, head teacher at Devonport Community Crèche, “I would challenge anyone to teach, and to look after, 10 two-year-olds.”

Outside next to the sandpit there’s a slide, which is about a metre tall. Two toddlers are pushing Tonka trucks around the sand, while another one digs at it with a plastic spade. In front of the slide, a young girl moves wooden blocks on a miniature wheelbarrow. Sam* runs up to us and grabs Dunleavy by her denim shirt. “I’ve got a hole in my shoe!” 

There are still more little students playing with water to the left, inside playing with toys or reading books or simply running around everywhere. Colourful paintings are hung up to dry, a child mows the astroturf with a plastic mower, and another fills up a bucket of water with a hose.

But that was yesterday. This afternoon, the Devonport Community Crèche and about 100 other early childhood centres around Aotearoa will be quiet. There are no kids and no teachers, because they are on strike. 

Their union, NZEI Te Riu Roa, says the current system is broken, and that more government  funding is needed for non-profit community-based services. During the latest round of negotiations for the Early Childhood Education Collective Agreement, they were unable to reach an agreement with Te Rito Maioha, the body that represents employers. Their requests were for more funding to support better teacher:child ratios and more experienced and qualified kaiako. 

Last month the members voted to take industrial action, the first ECE teachers have ever taken in New Zealand. Union ECE representative Megan White, from Capital Kids cooperative childcare centre, says, “we are not taking strike action lightly. Both we and our parents know that the ultimate answer to this crisis lies in the government’s hands.”

Tessa Dunleavy, Head Teacher at Devonport Community Creche, and one of her students. (Photo: Supplied)

Speaking from in the playground, Dunleavy says that Early childhood education teachers have been at the “beck and call” of different governments and changing policies so much that the profession lacks stability and support. In the lead up to the 2020 election, the Labour Party promised them pay parity. A plan towards it was introduced in 2022, and furthered by the 2022 Budget. The plan started January this year, but there are concerns that no systems are in place to maintain parity long term. It could easily all be over with a new government.

Dunleavy has been in it for 40 years, and says that negotiations with the Labour government have only been a small part of their fight. This was a culmination of “a lot of work over 20 years” from the union and teachers to achieve pay parity. That means children who were Sam’s age when they started the fight are now 24-year-old adults. Dunleavy thinks equitable education should be beyond the left or right-leaning politics of the day, and instead an unquestioned foundation of society. At the moment, the Devonport Community Crèche can’t plan beyond December, because they don’t know how much funding they will, or won’t, be receiving.

Scenes from everyday life at the Devonport Community Creche. (Photos: Supplied)

Still, the children at Devonport Community Crèche are lucky, they’re from a well-heeled suburb. Here, there are five teachers and 25 children, but this is only possible because parents can afford to contribute to the cost. Currently the government only funds one teacher for every five under-two-year-olds, one teacher to 10 two-year-olds, and one teacher to 10 three-year-olds. Many centres operate with only this funding. Dunleavy believes these ratios are not only “impossible” but also “actually dangerous”. In May, the union surveyed 4,174 ECE teachers, and 90% of them agreed with her. Many of them said with these ratios, their job is reduced to “basic care” and “crowd control” rather than teaching and learning. 

Proper attention is important when kids are this small. Te Whatu Ora puts it simply: “The first 1,000 days of a child’s life lay the foundations for their entire future.” A crèche or other form of early childhood care is often a child’s first home away from home. It is here that any behavioural or social issues can first be noticed and addressed – and it would be hard to notice and address issues with 10 two-year-olds to keep an eye on. 

The issues at ECE don’t stay at ECE. They grow up. They progress into school, where Dunleavy thinks they could cause learning and social difficulties. She says that since Covid, the centre has been seeing an increased number of tamariki with specific learning needs, another reason more teachers are needed.

Aside from there not being enough funding to hire more ECE teachers, there’s also a severe shortage. In May, almost three quarters of providers were unable to find qualified staff to fill roles. The conditions of the job mean it’s not exactly sought after. After four years of tertiary study, ECE teacher’s salaries begin at $46,000 annually. Because of the workload, many work extra unpaid hours. Dunleavy feels like she is part of a “dying breed of professionals”. The crèche hasn’t had any student teachers come to do a placement in the past year, and the majority of their teachers are approaching retirement – Dunleavy is 60. She’s worried about what might come next. “It will be interesting to see if they [the National Party] listen,” she says. 

In the reading area, a little boy starts crying. Someone has dropped a book.

‘Media is under threat. Help save The Spinoff with an ongoing commitment to support our work.’
Duncan Greive
— Founder
Keep going!
(Image: Archi Banal)
(Image: Archi Banal)

OPINIONSocietyNovember 7, 2023

The language double standard

(Image: Archi Banal)
(Image: Archi Banal)

We are facing a crisis of our very humanity in Palestine, writes Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman, so why do we argue over the words to describe it?

All over the world, millions of people marching in solidarity with Palestine have chanted the same phrase: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” And all over the world (including now here in Aotearoa) there have been arguments over what that statement means.

Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick spoke at a rally in Auckland on Saturday and said it. Speakers at rallies in dozens of countries have spoken it. Those chanting it say that it is a cry for freedom, and an expression of will for Palestine to be free from oppression and for Palestinians to live in dignity and self-determination. Critics say it is noted in the Hamas charter and is therefore a call for the destruction of Israel and all Jews. Some say by not referencing Israel at all, it suggests Israel shouldn’t exist. The largest party in Israel’s parliament, Likud, has a very similar phrase in its own 1973 charter. “Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” For a full breakdown of the disagreement, here’s a handy explainer.

Demonstrators gather in Aotea Square in central Auckland on Saturday. (Photo: Marama Muru-Lanning/ Additional design: Archi Banal)

The phrase evidently makes some people uncomfortable. For that reason alone, there will be debate, and debating language is an age-old tradition. But what is particularly hard to swallow is that at the same time this debate is happening (and Swarbrick’s face is on every major news site today because of it), there’s another debate about language unfolding: whether or not Palestine and its allies can refer to the systematic bombardment and killing of thousands of civilians as “genocide”. 

It’s widely understood and agreed that Israel is bombing Gaza relentlessly, and that the vast majority of those being killed by its attacks are civilians, including thousands of children. It’s understood that the attacks are in retaliation to attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7. It’s understood that Israel is instructing Gazans to leave their homes, a “voluntary” displacement, in order to not be killed by the attacks. It’s known and understood that Israeli settlements have been popping up in Palestine for decades, displacing Palestinians and slowly taking over their land. Palestinians have been deprived of basic human necessities like food, water and power for weeks now, and UN experts have warned of “ethnic cleansing”. But is it genocide? That’s a big word to throw around.

Meanwhile, those chanting in support of Palestinian freedom and a humanitarian ceasefire are being told that they in fact are the ones inciting genocide. That the mere suggestion of a free Palestine is a wish for harm to others. While the New Zealand government continues its lukewarm response to the conflict, and every day more children are killed by bombs, instead we are arguing, from a great distance, about whether or not six words should have been said by an MP. Even then we argue in ways that don’t allow for a complete examination of all that has led us here, instead absorbing the offence second or third hand. 

It would be entirely possible for a new chant to be coined and yelled around the world. But I don’t think that’s what is really being argued here. 

Last week, Tova O’Brien dedicated an episode of her Stuff podcast to “The Endless War”, and spoke to a former CNN senior international correspondent and a former Israeli ambassador to the United States. It’s unclear whether they were intended to offer opposite perspectives but what resulted is a perfect encapsulation of the double standards of language when talking about oppression.

The correspondent, Arwa Damon, was interviewed first. She spoke in a measured tone about the disparities in reporting language. “Palestinians are not wrong when they say that the rhetoric being used when referring to Palestinians and Palestinians being killed is very different to the rhetoric that is being used when journalists are talking about what is happening on the Israeli side.”

Even as Damon implored western journalists to consider their own unconscious biases when reporting on Israel and Palestine, she made sure to also criticise Arab media for putting its own slant on the attacks of October 7, saying they downplayed the terror of those attacks and the lives lost. When she spoke of the Palestinian perspective (a view shared by millions around the world), she spoke of land being taken, illegal settlements, and collective punishment. She never used emotional adjectives or labels or even specified perpetrators beyond the Israeli governments. I could almost hear her walking a tightrope when she ended by outlining a terrifying reality without getting too specific. “If we continue down this trajectory of one country being able to act with impunity and this level of civilian casualties in the name of national security, it says a lot about the state of affairs of humanity as a whole.” 

After a short ad break, Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador, dialled in from Tel Aviv. He explained that he was in a bomb shelter with his children and grandchildren. That he had recently been to a funeral for a young woman killed by Hamas. He described her murder in gruesome and graphic detail. He described Hamas members as being lower than animals and “monsters”. He insisted that a ceasefire would not work and would be the end of the state of Israel. Why?

“I don’t know whether you have children but I don’t know whether you’d want to raise them in a country where down the road you have a force of tens of thousands of armed terrorists who are going to come into your house and take your kids and dismember them and burn them.” 

It was a shocking hypothetical image to paint. A far more shocking image than the not so dissimilar reality that Damon had painted moments earlier. As Oren described this terrifying ceasefire future, down the road, Palestinian parents searched the rubble of their destroyed homes for their children’s bodies after another night of Israeli airstrikes on civilian centres. 

But wait there's more!