Sophie Walker, a 31-year-old science teacher and NEU representative, took a stand along with 50 of her colleagues at Westbourne Academy. They planned a strike to protest the increasing occurrences of their students’ bad behavior. Her experience in the four-day protest illuminates much of what has driven Walker to find a new profession outside of teaching altogether.
After having spent a decade focused on education, Walker lamented what she found at the academy. She wishes the leadership team would do a better job of communicating. Furthermore, she encourages her staff—especially her pastoral team—to use a unified approach when it comes to interventions for student misconduct. Walker knows that social media and mobile phones are the real root causes of most evils affecting educators and students these days.
The strike is occurring against a backdrop of increasing anger between teachers and their students, and subsequently their students’ parents. Reports indicate that some students exhibit disruptive behaviour, including roaming the halls, kicking doors, and even throwing objects in classrooms. Walker noted that the typical student attending Westbourne Academy is respectful with an eagerness to learn. A minority of disruptive people create a toxic environment taking away valuable learning from their peers.
I’ve worked hard to get where I am and I don’t want to walk away from the students who want to learn, but I don’t know how much longer I can cope, Walker stated.
Parents have voiced their concerns. As one parent put it, “Top leadership in the school has no accountability whatsoever when it comes to handling behavioural problems.” He pointed out the fact that although sometimes even petty infractions like not wearing a hat are enforced, major misconduct is not penalized nearly enough. “They let the perpetrator get away with it,” he lamented.
Marc Emmanuel, a fellow Westbourne Academy educator, seconded Walker’s experience. He described a nightmarish scene of pandemonium in the corridors. Mass gatherings of students convened for hours at a time, hindering student movement between classes and creating an intimidating and unsafe environment. “Pupils are running down the corridors for up to five hours a day. It can be 30 to 40 of them,” Emmanuel reported. He said there is a lack of sufficient preventive measures to deal with these behaviours.
As tensions continued to grow, not even leadership figures like the ASCL’s Vic Goddard could deny the plight of teachers. “As school leaders, our job is to support teachers to manage behaviour while allowing others to continue to learn, and that’s where the battle is,” he explained.
Even through all the chaos, though, Walker’s mission to her students hasn’t wavered. “I’m only still here because of the students who want to learn. They deserve an education,” she said. Her love for teaching was clear when she came out a decade ago expecting to have a long, fulfilling career in education.
