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Hyper-performativity and early career teachers

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Kirsten Lambert discusses the hyper-performative expectations of early career teachers (ECTs) in the context of neoliberal education assemblages.

Image courtesy of interviewee. April 3, 2024

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This video video discusses a research study examining how early career performing arts teachers in Western Australia construct their professional identities amidst pressures of “hyper-performativity” within education. Conducted with 27 teachers in their first two years of teaching, the study utilized semi-structured interviews to explore their experiences, identity development, and the reality versus their expectations upon entering the profession.

Key findings reveal that 35% of the teachers left the profession following the study, reflecting a broader crisis of teacher attrition in Australia linked to job insecurity, lack of support, high workloads, and dissatisfaction. The study identifies significant challenges for performing arts teachers, including:

1. **Insecure Employment**: Many teachers were on temporary contracts and often unsure of their future employment, leading them to overwork and perform to secure their positions.

2. **School Culture**: A competitive culture valuing extensive obligations and data-driven outcomes was normalized, leading teachers to feel compelled to work excessive hours and engage in unpaid extracurricular activities, often at the expense of their mental and physical health.

3. **Mental Health Issues**: The overwhelming workload and the pressure to uphold idealized notions of a "good teacher" resulted in deteriorating mental health among many participants, who reported neglecting their personal well-being and social relationships.

The paper emphasizes that the teaching environment, particularly for performing arts educators, needs to be made sustainable to retain passionate teachers. While attracting new educators is important, the focus should equally be on creating supportive working conditions that prioritize teachers' well-being. The study ultimately argues for systemic changes in educational institutions to alleviate the burdens placed on those entering the teaching profession, especially in the arts.

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We looked at how early career teachers construct teacher

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subjectivities in an age of hyper performativity.

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So basically we had 27 performing arts

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teachers in Western Australia,

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who were early career teachers.

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So that's in their first two years of teaching.

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And they worked in secondary schools in either

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dance drama or music.

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So we did semi-structured interviews

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with the 27 students in either in groups or individually.

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And the interviews went for approximately one hour,

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and we're exploring

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how they experienced their beginning teaching

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and their understanding of their identity development

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and how that differed from their

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expectations when they were students.

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Uh, so these schools

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that they were teaching in were from a range

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of different independent and Catholic schools,

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and from a range of different socioeconomic backgrounds

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in Western Australia.

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The average age of the teachers was 23,

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and we conducted their first interviews in 2018.

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And this paper is based on those interviews.

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Uh, after this paper was published, we,

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did follow up research on those participants,

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and sadly, 35%

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of them have left the profession since we

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interviewed these students.

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There has been a lot of research on teacher attrition in

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Australia, and this reflects obviously what's happening on

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the international stage.

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Uh, you know, it's quite widely known as being in crisis,

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and we have a national teacher workforce plan here in

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Australia, to address this crisis.

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And it's particularly bad in secondary schools.

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And that research shows, you know, factors such

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as insecure employment, lack of support, heavy workloads

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and dissatisfaction with career opportunities, et cetera,

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influence attrition rates.

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And, you know, salary levels is also an aspect of it.

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And, but for performing arts teachers, prior research,

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including our own research, showed that the devaluing

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of the arts as a result of a focus on high stakes testing

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and the publishing of results on my school web pages,

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et cetera, you know, made the focus on literacy

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and numeracy, you know, a, you know, foregrounded,

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which meant that the arts receive less

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funding and less recognition.

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And so that has, you know, in that has also been researched

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as well with regard to teacher attrition.

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Research has been done on looking at becoming a teacher

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through looking at identity,

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but our research is really focusing on, in fleshed

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or embodied identity, that understanding of, you know,

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the interconnectivity of teaching.

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So, you know, we have multiple identities.

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We have a different identity when we're at home

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or with our friends or as teachers.

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And we were particularly interested in performing arts

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teachers because we are already,

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You know, in a very, we have spaces that don't have desks,

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et cetera, quite, you know, quite often.

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And it is a completely different type of teaching to,

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you know, teaching English or maths, et cetera.

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Okay. So we utilized a neo materialist paradigm,

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which focused on the work of Bray, Dotty, and Butler

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and Deur and Qatari,

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and basically a

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critical neo materialist paradigm focuses on, you know,

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the body and, you know, critiquing

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existing structures of power.

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So how, you know, normalized, normative,

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hegemonic power structures, intersect

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with our own desires and our own

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and fleshed, you know, beings

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or, you know, becomings to impact, you know,

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how we see ourselves in the world.

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So we looked at theoretically, we,

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theoretically we looked at Urs and Qatari

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and their concept of the rhizome,

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which is a subterranean plant,

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and it has, you know, all the roots and shoots.

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And it's, it's a fantastic

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metaphor when we're looking at teachers

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because, you know, teachers are connected with

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their own sense of self, their, their schools,

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this discourse of what it means to be a good teacher

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connected with their students.

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And so rather than just viewing, identity as something

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that is stable and in a box, so you might say, you know,

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a child, adolescent adult is a, you know,

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a really stable si, side of identity.

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We looked at identity as, you know,

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continuously in flow and in flux.

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And so our central node was the idea of a rhizome,

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and that was the becoming teacher.

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That's a central node.

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And then from this, we explored the in fleshed

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or embodied working environments of early career teachers,

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particularly insecure work contracts

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and the, the impact

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of their work contracts on their mental health.

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And then the second thing we looked at is the idea

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of a sense of belonging to a school culture.

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And we looked at that through the lens

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of subjective materiality, so embodied and in fleshed.

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And then thirdly, we looked at

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how early career teachers develop their identities in

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response to hyper performative school cultures.

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And hyper performativity is a, you know, a concept

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that has been developed by Stephen J. Ball.

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And that the idea that, you know,

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schools are always on show, you know, with whether it's data

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or, you know, reform and measures and targets

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and this business discourse, where schools

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have to be seen to be, you know, better than everyone else.

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It's a competitive market for students.

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So we looked at their own, sense

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of self in relation

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to those hyper performative school cultures.

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We interviewed the students

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and, we talked to them, you know, I think I mentioned

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that previously about having, qualitative interviews.

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So they're semi-structured interviews.

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We interviewed, interviewed most of them in small groups,

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which was fantastic.

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You know, they get to chat to one another

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and, you know, that sort of gets the ball rolling.

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We use sample, snowball sampling methodology

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to find out interviewees

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and, you know, they got their friends

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or Facebook, friends who were also teaching in the arts.

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And that was in 2018. So that's before the pandemic.

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We interviewed them about their experiences in schools.

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And of course, you know, a whole lot has happened

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since then, which has, you know,

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resulted in a lot of them leaving.

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But, so that's,

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and then of course, you know, we used in, in vivo to,

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to map the data and come up

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with the emerging themes, et cetera.

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The first, finding that we found was the, you know,

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in flesh Becomings, an insecure employment contracts, most

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of the students that we,

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or sorry, teachers that we interviewed were on temporary,

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contracts, which literally meant,

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there's four school terms in every year.

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And most of them did not know whether they'd be teaching in

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term two, in term one.

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And sometimes that went right till the end of the, you know,

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right down to the, the line, you know, the last day

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of school, they're finding out if they have a job.

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So that was the first thing.

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So that really, IM impacted how they acted as well,

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and how they saw themselves.

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They, it led to them, always, you know, performing.

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Everything's going really well.

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Uh, you know, yes, I will do this.

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Yes, I will do the school production.

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Yes, I will work, you know, 12 hours a day,

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five days a week, and weekend performances

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because I want that secure contract.

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And, they, they, a lot of them talked about,

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just saying yes to everything

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or, you know, sucking up to the boss,

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or it was a competition amongst staff for those contracts.

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They felt that they were being exploited

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and, that they had no say they had to.

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So, for example, in secondary schools,

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you have ATAR subjects.

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So your, final year of schooling

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or final two years of schooling

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before you go to university or work.

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So those subjects are very high stakes subjects,

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and they would be, you know, combining year 11 and year 12

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and two different, you know,

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at hard subjects in one class with 25

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or up to 30 students in, you know, in the one class just

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to please their bosses.

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Whereas that would never happen in maths.

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You, you'd never get that in a, you know,

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specialist maths class or whatever.

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So they were, they found themselves, you know, saying,

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you know, look how good I am,

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how wonderful my kids are, et cetera.

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And that was exhausting. Uh, so that was the first thing.

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The, as far as, the, you know, insecure contracts.

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Secondly, because they're performing arts teachers,

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they're expected to do extracurricular productions,

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so music productions, school productions,

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and these things are huge.

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You know, sometimes they can be up

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to 300 students in a school production.

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I mean, that is a massive,

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and that is on top of their workload already.

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And being an early career teacher, it takes a lot longer,

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you know, to get your lesson preparation,

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to mark your assignments, to contact with parents,

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et cetera, and then to do school productions on top of that.

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And they, a lot of those were,

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ex they were unwritten expectations that

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as a performing arts teacher, that is just

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what you did that you would do.

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And even if they weren't working full-time,

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they were still expected to run the music production

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or the, you know, drama production, et cetera.

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Uh, and what they also found was

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because the arts aren't valued,

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students were being counseled out of their classes.

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So they would, you know, they would lose a lot of the,

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you know, high level ATAR students

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and be given a whole lot of students who didn't even want

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to do in drama or dance or music in their classes

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because they weren't valued.

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So not, are they, not only are they not valued,

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the thing they are valued for is a big production, you know,

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a big show for our school is a part

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of the advertising thing.

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The second, offshoot

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that we looked at was the school culture

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and our early career teacher's sense of belonging.

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So fitting in with that school culture.

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And what we found is that that normalized culture

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of competitive performativity

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and that culture of working long hours, you know, this,

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fetishization of, data

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and, you know,

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your work never being finished was really accepted,

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sadly, by the teachers.

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That's just what they thought being a teacher was, you know,

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being performing arts teacher,

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you just have to put in those hours.

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Subsequently, when we interviewed them, you know,

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a few years down the track, a lot of them had left

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because they just couldn't live like that anymore.

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And especially if they wanted to have families,

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you know, or have a life that that fetishization of overwork

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and that governing

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or hyper surveillance through data, was just part of

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what being a good teacher was.

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And, what we found really alarming was that

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how they took it for granted.

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And they would even say things like, you know,

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if you're a performing arts teacher,

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it's a hundred percent committed a commitment in it.

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And that's just being the heart of a teacher is a

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and they would, you know, teachers who left

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or couldn't cope with not doing

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that were almost looked down upon, in a sense, you know,

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they couldn't hack it, you know,

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if you can't handle the heat, get outta the kitchen,

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which we thought, you know,

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and they talked about people leaving all the time.

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You know, last year I took over from the drama teacher

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and they left, and then someone, you know, they talked

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to about people always leaving,

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and they were seen as being, you know, the, the strong few

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who survived, you know, which is really sad that that

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overworking is so normalized that our teachers, you know,

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just thought it was part of being a teacher.

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The third thing that we found, was, you know, it kind

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of intersects with the previous two, is

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that these hyper performative teacher subjectivities

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that were embedded in, in their own, you know, sense

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of being and were,

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were fleshed in their bodies causing mental ill health.

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And so a lot of them talked about, you know,

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being sick all the time, but not

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being able to take time off.

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You know, when they used to look

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after themselves when they were students, you know,

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have a good diet and exercise,

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they would live off junk food, and they didn't look

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after themselves anymore.

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And, you know, they had to go

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and see psychiatrists, et cetera, et cetera.

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So this, 70 plus working hours a week was ruining their

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set, their mental health, their personal lives at home,

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their relationships, you know,

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their partners couldn't understand why they had

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to be at work such long hours

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and why they were there on the weekends.

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And, yeah, so their mental, I think I said

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that mental health sickness and diet

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and exercise went out the window.

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Uh, and I, there's, you know, a quote from one of them

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who said, I would make myself sick trying

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to do everything I had to do.

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You can't actually physically do everything you need to do

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and be a performing arts teacher at the same time.

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You know, it's a very, the, what we found was that the

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power of the normalizing apparatus of the school operates

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by constituting a field of intelligibility.

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This is what it means to be a teacher.

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There is no other way.

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And that was just taken for granted.

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You know, it's almost like an ontological, baseline,

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but the material effects on the body were,

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incompatible with health, with, with, with good health,

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with good mental or physical or relational health.

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We really found that our early career teacher, becomings,

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are mediated through this idea, this neoliberal discourse

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of quality and performance.

14:40.485 --> 14:42.225
And, you know, that idea

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of being the hyper performative teacher.

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And part of, you know, as this is in flesh, in the bodies

14:48.905 --> 14:50.665
of teachers, it's 70 hour working

14:50.665 --> 14:53.485
Weeks, extracurricular unpaid work,

14:54.205 --> 14:55.565
deteriorating mental health,

14:56.265 --> 15:01.245
and this acceptance of, you know, being competitive in order

15:01.545 --> 15:03.005
to get out there in the market.

15:03.865 --> 15:06.245
And, we found that teachers found

15:06.245 --> 15:08.965
that they were continually under threat of being unemployed

15:09.945 --> 15:13.205
and, the education culture that,

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that they were going into, you know, fetishizes over work.

15:18.105 --> 15:20.885
And, so the early career teachers are measuring

15:20.885 --> 15:23.765
themselves against this idea of the good teacher who,

15:24.225 --> 15:25.325
you know, works full time,

15:25.555 --> 15:27.205
even if they're not employed full time.

15:27.905 --> 15:29.845
And, you know, they work 70 hour weeks

15:30.585 --> 15:33.165
and that that is just being the heart of the teacher.

15:33.225 --> 15:35.365
That's just what it is to be a teacher.

15:35.715 --> 15:39.485
However, that is unsustainable on their bodies.

15:40.225 --> 15:44.365
Uh, and they, the, I mean, the sad things was they were so

15:45.415 --> 15:49.245
passionate and creative and really excited to be teachers.

15:49.245 --> 15:50.525
They wanted to be teachers.

15:50.525 --> 15:54.045
They loved doing their, big productions with the kids.

15:54.115 --> 15:56.965
They loved talk, you know, they loved working with kids,

15:56.965 --> 15:58.165
they loved performing arts.

15:58.245 --> 16:00.125
A lot of them are actors, et cetera, you know,

16:00.125 --> 16:01.885
before they get into the profession and

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or musicians or dancers.

16:04.705 --> 16:07.085
And so, you know, they're really, really passionate.

16:07.705 --> 16:11.285
But, you know, the implications is it's not about attracting

16:11.465 --> 16:14.085
top students into the profession,

16:14.435 --> 16:18.165
it's about making the profession livable so

16:18.165 --> 16:20.765
that the effects on the body of being a teacher

16:21.775 --> 16:25.325
don't end up being, you know, mental ill health,

16:25.345 --> 16:26.485
you know, being sick all the time,

16:26.625 --> 16:29.005
having poor relationships,

16:29.545 --> 16:31.445
and you know, and, and leaving.

16:31.825 --> 16:33.645
That's the sad thing. So they go out there,

16:33.645 --> 16:34.885
they're really enthusiastic,

16:34.905 --> 16:37.765
but it just is, it just burns them out.

16:38.185 --> 16:40.965
So, you know, that was the implications for, you know,

16:41.065 --> 16:44.085
in the teacher, national teacher workforce plan we have in

16:44.085 --> 16:47.005
Australia at the moment, you know, they've made a number

16:47.005 --> 16:48.245
of suggestions.

16:48.545 --> 16:53.485
So improving teacher supply and strengthening the ITE Pro

16:53.485 --> 16:56.925
or early, so university programs, I mean, that's great.

16:56.925 --> 16:59.125
You know, we can attract as many teachers as we want

16:59.185 --> 17:01.485
and, as we want and we can pump them out.

17:01.945 --> 17:04.965
But it's keeping the work, the teachers that we have.

17:05.785 --> 17:08.925
And, so, you know, making teaching doable.

00:00 - We looked at how early career teachers construct teacher subjectivities in an age of hyper performativity. So basically we had 27 performing arts teachers in Western Australia, who were early career teachers. So that's in their first two years of teaching.

00:17 - And they worked in secondary schools in either dance drama or music. So we did semi-structured interviews with the 27 students in either in groups or individually. And the interviews went for approximately one hour, and we're exploring how they experienced their beginning teaching and their understanding of their identity development and how that differed from their expectations when they were students.

00:43 - so these schools that they were teaching in were from a range of different independent and Catholic schools, and from a range of different socioeconomic backgrounds in Western Australia. The average age of the teachers was 23, and we conducted their first interviews in 2018. And this paper is based on those interviews. after this paper was published, we, did follow up research on those participants,

01:11 - and sadly, 35% of them have left the profession since we interviewed these students. There has been a lot of research on teacher attrition in Australia, and this reflects obviously what's happening on the international stage. you know, it's quite widely known as being in crisis, and we have a national teacher workforce plan here in Australia, to address this crisis. And it's particularly bad in secondary schools.

01:39 - And that research shows, you know, factors such as insecure employment, lack of support, heavy workloads and dissatisfaction with career opportunities, et cetera, influence attrition rates. And, you know, salary levels is also an aspect of it. And, but for performing arts teachers, prior research, including our own research, showed that the devaluing of the arts as a result of a focus on high stakes testing and the publishing of results on my school web pages, et cetera, you know, made the focus on literacy

02:17 - and numeracy, you know, a, you know, foregrounded, which meant that the arts receive less funding and less recognition. And so that has, you know, in that has also been researched as well with regard to teacher attrition. Research has been done on looking at becoming a teacher through looking at identity, but our research is really focusing on, in fleshed or embodied identity, that understanding of, you know, the interconnectivity of teaching.

02:47 - So, you know, we have multiple identities. We have a different identity when we're at home or with our friends or as teachers. And we were particularly interested in performing arts teachers because we are already, You know, in a very, we have spaces that don't have desks, et cetera, quite, you know, quite often. And it is a completely different type of teaching to, you know, teaching English or maths, et cetera. Okay. So we utilized a neo materialist paradigm,

03:15 - which focused on the work of Bray, Dotty, and Butler and Deur and Qatari, and basically a critical neo materialist paradigm focuses on, you know, the body and, you know, critiquing existing structures of power. So how, you know, normalized, normative, hegemonic power structures, intersect with our own desires and our own and fleshed, you know, beings

03:46 - or, you know, becomings to impact, you know, how we see ourselves in the world. So we looked at theoretically, we, theoretically we looked at Urs and Qatari and their concept of the rhizome, which is a subterranean plant, and it has, you know, all the roots and shoots. And it's, it's a fantastic metaphor when we're looking at teachers because, you know, teachers are connected with

04:14 - their own sense of self, their, their schools, this discourse of what it means to be a good teacher connected with their students. And so rather than just viewing, identity as something that is stable and in a box, so you might say, you know, a child, adolescent adult is a, you know, a really stable si, side of identity. We looked at identity as, you know, continuously in flow and in flux. And so our central node was the idea of a rhizome,

04:44 - and that was the becoming teacher. That's a central node. And then from this, we explored the in fleshed or embodied working environments of early career teachers, particularly insecure work contracts and the, the impact of their work contracts on their mental health. And then the second thing we looked at is the idea of a sense of belonging to a school culture. And we looked at that through the lens

05:09 - of subjective materiality, so embodied and in fleshed. And then thirdly, we looked at how early career teachers develop their identities in response to hyper performative school cultures. And hyper performativity is a, you know, a concept that has been developed by Stephen J. Ball. And that the idea that, you know, schools are always on show, you know, with whether it's data or, you know, reform and measures and targets and this business discourse, where schools

05:44 - have to be seen to be, you know, better than everyone else. It's a competitive market for students. So we looked at their own, sense of self in relation to those hyper performative school cultures. We interviewed the students and, we talked to them, you know, I think I mentioned that previously about having, qualitative interviews. So they're semi-structured interviews. We interviewed, interviewed most of them in small groups,

06:14 - which was fantastic. You know, they get to chat to one another and, you know, that sort of gets the ball rolling. We use sample, snowball sampling methodology to find out interviewees and, you know, they got their friends or Facebook, friends who were also teaching in the arts. And that was in 2018. So that's before the pandemic. We interviewed them about their experiences in schools. And of course, you know, a whole lot has happened

06:40 - since then, which has, you know, resulted in a lot of them leaving. But, so that's, and then of course, you know, we used in, in vivo to, to map the data and come up with the emerging themes, et cetera. The first, finding that we found was the, you know, in flesh Becomings, an insecure employment contracts, most of the students that we, or sorry, teachers that we interviewed were on temporary,

07:05 - contracts, which literally meant, there's four school terms in every year. And most of them did not know whether they'd be teaching in term two, in term one. And sometimes that went right till the end of the, you know, right down to the, the line, you know, the last day of school, they're finding out if they have a job. So that was the first thing. So that really, IM impacted how they acted as well, and how they saw themselves.

07:30 - They, it led to them, always, you know, performing. Everything's going really well. you know, yes, I will do this. Yes, I will do the school production. Yes, I will work, you know, 12 hours a day, five days a week, and weekend performances because I want that secure contract. And, they, they, a lot of them talked about, just saying yes to everything or, you know, sucking up to the boss,

07:56 - or it was a competition amongst staff for those contracts. They felt that they were being exploited and, that they had no say they had to. So, for example, in secondary schools, you have ATAR subjects. So your, final year of schooling or final two years of schooling before you go to university or work. So those subjects are very high stakes subjects, and they would be, you know, combining year 11 and year 12

08:27 - and two different, you know, at hard subjects in one class with 25 or up to 30 students in, you know, in the one class just to please their bosses. Whereas that would never happen in maths. You, you'd never get that in a, you know, specialist maths class or whatever. So they were, they found themselves, you know, saying, you know, look how good I am, how wonderful my kids are, et cetera.

08:54 - And that was exhausting. so that was the first thing. The, as far as, the, you know, insecure contracts. Secondly, because they're performing arts teachers, they're expected to do extracurricular productions, so music productions, school productions, and these things are huge. You know, sometimes they can be up to 300 students in a school production. I mean, that is a massive, and that is on top of their workload already.

09:22 - And being an early career teacher, it takes a lot longer, you know, to get your lesson preparation, to mark your assignments, to contact with parents, et cetera, and then to do school productions on top of that. And they, a lot of those were, ex they were unwritten expectations that as a performing arts teacher, that is just what you did that you would do. And even if they weren't working full-time, they were still expected to run the music production

09:51 - or the, you know, drama production, et cetera. and what they also found was because the arts aren't valued, students were being counseled out of their classes. So they would, you know, they would lose a lot of the, you know, high level ATAR students and be given a whole lot of students who didn't even want to do in drama or dance or music in their classes because they weren't valued. So not, are they, not only are they not valued,

10:20 - the thing they are valued for is a big production, you know, a big show for our school is a part of the advertising thing. The second, offshoot that we looked at was the school culture and our early career teacher's sense of belonging. So fitting in with that school culture. And what we found is that that normalized culture of competitive performativity and that culture of working long hours, you know, this,

10:50 - fetishization of, data and, you know, your work never being finished was really accepted, sadly, by the teachers. That's just what they thought being a teacher was, you know, being performing arts teacher, you just have to put in those hours. Subsequently, when we interviewed them, you know, a few years down the track, a lot of them had left because they just couldn't live like that anymore.

11:15 - And especially if they wanted to have families, you know, or have a life that that fetishization of overwork and that governing or hyper surveillance through data, was just part of what being a good teacher was. And, what we found really alarming was that how they took it for granted. And they would even say things like, you know, if you're a performing arts teacher, it's a hundred percent committed a commitment in it.

11:44 - And that's just being the heart of a teacher is a and they would, you know, teachers who left or couldn't cope with not doing that were almost looked down upon, in a sense, you know, they couldn't hack it, you know, if you can't handle the heat, get outta the kitchen, which we thought, you know, and they talked about people leaving all the time. You know, last year I took over from the drama teacher and they left, and then someone, you know, they talked

12:08 - to about people always leaving, and they were seen as being, you know, the, the strong few who survived, you know, which is really sad that that overworking is so normalized that our teachers, you know, just thought it was part of being a teacher. The third thing that we found, was, you know, it kind of intersects with the previous two, is that these hyper performative teacher subjectivities that were embedded in, in their own, you know, sense of being and were,

12:44 - were fleshed in their bodies causing mental ill health. And so a lot of them talked about, you know, being sick all the time, but not being able to take time off. You know, when they used to look after themselves when they were students, you know, have a good diet and exercise, they would live off junk food, and they didn't look after themselves anymore. And, you know, they had to go

13:08 - and see psychiatrists, et cetera, et cetera. So this, 70 plus working hours a week was ruining their set, their mental health, their personal lives at home, their relationships, you know, their partners couldn't understand why they had to be at work such long hours and why they were there on the weekends. And, yeah, so their mental, I think I said that mental health sickness and diet and exercise went out the window.

13:35 - and I, there's, you know, a quote from one of them who said, I would make myself sick trying to do everything I had to do. You can't actually physically do everything you need to do and be a performing arts teacher at the same time. You know, it's a very, the, what we found was that the power of the normalizing apparatus of the school operates by constituting a field of intelligibility. This is what it means to be a teacher. There is no other way.

14:10 - And that was just taken for granted. You know, it's almost like an ontological, baseline, but the material effects on the body were, incompatible with health, with, with, with good health, with good mental or physical or relational health. We really found that our early career teacher, becomings, are mediated through this idea, this neoliberal discourse of quality and performance. And, you know, that idea of being the hyper performative teacher.

14:44 - And part of, you know, as this is in flesh, in the bodies of teachers, it's 70 hour working Weeks, extracurricular unpaid work, deteriorating mental health, and this acceptance of, you know, being competitive in order to get out there in the market. And, we found that teachers found that they were continually under threat of being unemployed and, the education culture that, that they were going into, you know, fetishizes over work.

15:18 - And, so the early career teachers are measuring themselves against this idea of the good teacher who, you know, works full time, even if they're not employed full time. And, you know, they work 70 hour weeks and that that is just being the heart of the teacher. That's just what it is to be a teacher. However, that is unsustainable on their bodies. and they, the, I mean, the sad things was they were so passionate and creative and really excited to be teachers.

15:49 - They wanted to be teachers. They loved doing their, big productions with the kids. They loved talk, you know, they loved working with kids, they loved performing arts. A lot of them are actors, et cetera, you know, before they get into the profession and or musicians or dancers. And so, you know, they're really, really passionate. But, you know, the implications is it's not about attracting top students into the profession,

16:14 - it's about making the profession livable so that the effects on the body of being a teacher don't end up being, you know, mental ill health, you know, being sick all the time, having poor relationships, and you know, and, and leaving. That's the sad thing. So they go out there, they're really enthusiastic, but it just is, it just burns them out. So, you know, that was the implications for, you know,

16:41 - in the teacher, national teacher workforce plan we have in Australia at the moment, you know, they've made a number of suggestions. So improving teacher supply and strengthening the ITE Pro or early, so university programs, I mean, that's great. You know, we can attract as many teachers as we want and, as we want and we can pump them out. But it's keeping the work, the teachers that we have. And, so, you know, making teaching doable.

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