Victorian teachers clocking up overtime tackling social media drama between students
Parents are being urged to manage their kids’ social media conflicts that occur outside school as teachers spend hours of their personal time dealing with the “wash-up”.
Victorian teachers are clocking up hours of overtime tackling drama on social media that occurs between students outside of school.
The Herald Sun understands teachers and other staff members are working an average of 12 hours unpaid overtime per week managing these extra expectations placed upon them.
A Bayside teacher, who asked not to be named, said some isolated incidents that happened on the weekend could take up to two hours per day to resolve.
“I can’t talk about it when I’m teaching so I have to use my breaks and after school hours,” she said.
“The additional time you get as a teacher is meant to be for planning and data analysis but now it’s used for dealing with these issues because they take immediate priority.”
The teacher said most disputes arose on social media.
“There was a time that a student in my class posted a Snapchat story about another student in the cohort,” she said.
“One of the girl’s mums stumbled across it on her Snapchat feed when she was browsing … she then emailed us teachers at the school and asked what we were going to do about it.
“We ended up having this big intervention with both mums and girls trying to figure out what happened.
“Social media is really complicated and makes it hard because we can’t really manage that.”
Australian Education Union Victoria Branch president Justin Mullaly said outside-school conflicts had to be managed by the students’ parents.
“Issues between students that occur outside of school hours can impact on students’ readiness to learn, relationships within the classroom, and can have a negative flow-on effect on the rest of the class when teachers’ time is taken away from focusing on the delivery of high quality teaching and learning,” he said.
“Parents and teachers need to work in partnership, with a clear understanding of the core role of teachers and other school staff, so that student learning is prioritised and other issues that happen outside of school are dealt with appropriately by families.”
From December 10, children under 16 will no longer be able to create or maintain social media accounts on certain platforms like Snapchat, TiKTok and Instagram.
It comes as the state government rolled out a “statement of expectation” in schools on Monday to encourage parents to model and support positive behaviours.
“Teachers today face enormous stresses, not just from students but it can often come from the parents,” Education Minister Ben Carroll said.
“We know often on a Monday at school, they are dealing with the wash-up on what’s happened online or what’s happened at the local football club.
“It’s not all on the schools shoulders, the schools do so much everyday for our young people ... our message to parents is to get behind this statement of expectations.
“Please have high expectations and high aspirations for your sons and daughters.”
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Originally published as Victorian teachers clocking up overtime tackling social media drama between students
