Teacher driven out of Qld after decade on frontline

A teacher who likens the stress of the classroom to a war zone has returned home to NSW after a decade on the Queensland frontline.

Lara (not real name) worked as a teacher in Queensland for 10 years but the stress of the job has forced her to move to NSW. Picture: Adam Yip

A teacher who worked in Queensland for 10 years has moved back to New South Wales claiming violence, workloads and expectations to keep disruptive students in class was getting worse and she was tired from convincing herself it would get better.

Lara – who has used a pseudonym and asked us to protect her identity – had been teaching in Queensland for ten years in rural, regional and metro primary schools before fleeing Queensland earlier this year.

She has likened the stress of a classroom to that of a soldier on a battlefield.

Lara said she studied to become a teacher to inspire children to become passionate about learning, as her teachers had done for her.

During her first few weeks being in a classroom while still at university, and when she started her first proper job, she realised the children were physically abusive.

“The first year I taught I was given a class of 33 students, which was a really big achievement for me,” Lara said.

“Their previous teacher had taken stress leave … in that class there was a child who stabbed another with a pencil and the graphite broke off.

“That kid had to go to the doctors to get it removed.”

Lara said parents at the school would come to her crying.

“One poor child who was sought out by this other child was strangled on the playground, we gave him ice and immediately contacted his mum to let her know,” she said.

The child got a suspension for it, but that mother came to school the next morning so upset, she hadn’t slept the night before.

“She had been through IVF to have this child, her only child.

“She was scared one day we’d call her saying her child was dead because of this other student … I have friends who have been through IVF so I know where she was coming from, the most precious thing in her life,” she said.

Lara (not real name) worked as a teacher in Queensland for 10 years but the stress of the job has forced her to move to NSW. Picture: Adam Yip

Lara recounted her most terrifying teaching experience was in regional Queensland when teaching year 7 students.

“There was a group of boys who would threaten to break into my house and rape and murder me … It was scary because in the small town everyone knew where everyone lived,” Lara said.

“That group had just returned from juvenile detention for car theft.

“Those sorts of things still, very much do, still stick with me, and part of that is because after I’d left that community a 12-year-old girl fell pregnant after being raped by her cousins, and they were the boys,” she said.

Lara said verbal threats were more terrifying as she believed they would be carried out.

She said she nearly had her arm broken by a child, who was prone to running away, when he twisted her arm and dropped his weight to the ground.

“I’ve been called a f--king b-tch and had everything imaginable thrown at me,” she said.

Lara said when she started as a teacher in New South Wales 18 years ago and had noticed an extreme escalation in violent incidents in primary schools.

“When I started it would be every couple of days or few weeks, and then something else might erupt, sort of thing, whereas, you know, more recently in the last few years it’s like every quarter of an hour you’re regulating a child or sending the class out of the room,” Lara said.

She said she blamed three major reasons for children misbehaving more frequently, including a lack of nutrition, technology and parent’s relying too heavily on the school to manage behaviour.

“I’m very knowledgeable on food and chemicals in food, and basically what I see in lunch boxes makes me cringe … Kids can come back from lunch breaks and act feral,” Lara said.

“I also think technology is playing an enormous part, because so many children have a device or multiple devices.

“They’re not learning to interact or to problem solve, there’s no resilience because kids haven’t been taught that you can’t control everybody else, because in these stupid games they’re all playing, they control everything.

“I’ve now made myself unavailable on Mondays because you’re dealing with kids who spent the weekend in very unstructured homes on technology all weekend.

“When Monday comes kids have outbursts because they’ve been shoved into an instant detox of technology and they can’t cope,” she said.

Lara (not real name) worked as a teacher in Queensland for 10 years but the stress of the job has forced her to move to NSW. Picture: Adam Yip

She likened her experiences in the classroom to that of a soldier on the battlefield.

“I have to be hyper vigilant and on guard all the time because you never know when something is going to get thrown or a child is going to get triggered and lose it over something,” Lara said.

Lara said she had also received unbelievable abuse from parents after taking personal leave when her mother died from cancer.

“I was screamed at by a grandparent for not giving the child consistency, when I explained my mother had passed away she said “I don’t f-cking care”.

“It’s like you’re not perceived that you’re actually human and that you do have a life, you’re expected to be here every day for their child and do everything for their child that they’re basically not doing,” she said.

Lara said she loved NDIS as it provides essential support for families with children who had disabilities but it came with a downfall.

“As soon as a kid has a label or has NDIS funding attached to them, it’s like there’s then suddenly a different set of rules to play by, there are so many excuses put out there to accept that kids’ behaviour.

“They keep making excuses, but at the end of the day, the kids grow up, they get into society and haven’t learned what is acceptable, and then they’re in a shopping centre and they’re losing it over something, and the next minute, the cops are getting called.

“They’re learning that they use (their) disability or diagnosis as an excuse and sooner or later the justice system isn’t going to let you off, because you’ve got Autism,” she said.

Lara, who now teaches casually in New South Wales, said she was very open about being on anti-Anxiety medication for several years.

“I’ve had anxiety for a long time, but because of the amount of stress I was under, I was unable to do my job properly, to the point I actually am now medicated for anxiety,” Lara said.

“I know I couldn’t do my job anymore without being medicated, which is why I had to go on it.”