Following on from our previous episode on Young People, Mental Health and Rona, in this episode we chat with high school teacher & entrepreneur Nic Robertson. Nic has 13 years experience teaching in both the private and public school systems in Logan, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.
Nic is also the founder of SwapU – a swapping marketplace. It’s a fantastic idea and a great alternative to buying/selling with money. In our conversations, he says that rather than holding on to our things and then eventually throwing them away, we could swap and trade our goods and end up with richer experiences in life. There’s an added bonus of less waste ending up in landfill. The app also is a chance to open up opportunities for disadvantaged kids so they might get a chance to try something new. For example, try a new sport etc. The app challenges people to change their sense of ownership. As Nic says; “don’t let the item own you”.
During our chat Nic shares with us his thoughts on The Courier Mail’s sensational article published in early December: “Dire teacher shortages rattle Qld schools” (paywalled). The article mentions rumours of a mass exodus of teachers from the profession if teachers are mandated to be vaccinated against Covid19. Nic believes this is nonsense and discusses other reasons why teachers might be considering leaving the profession.
Andrea and Nic discuss the provision of PPE for teachers and confusion in messaging for teachers and students during the covid outbreak and then go on to discuss the change in workloads as schools closed and moved to online learning during 2020. Nic describes what the online learning environment was like for teachers during lockdown.
Nic describes the differences between a well resourced school and a more disadvantaged school when it comes to online learning, the differences between public and private schools and the differences in educational outcomes in terms of availability of devices for students and affordability of internet access for families in the school communities.
Other disadvantages discussed include how different the online learning environment is compared to how teachers were trained to teach and also how certain students are able to learn.
Education for the future is discussed including Free University…. And Free Tafe in Schools. Nic likes the idea of students keeping in touch with industry and education at the same time.
Nic discusses with us the concept of lifelong learning that we all have to do in our professional lives and also that we all have different ways of contributing to our community (including volunteering), but we all want to contribute in a meaningful way throughout our lives in some way. And we prefer to be doing something we enjoy – even more preferably – doing something we love.
Nic’s 3 Big Ideas:
- Change – embrace the changes that come with Covid19 and move away from the things that weren’t working
- Connection – online connection is great but keep face to face going too
- Training – both the teachers and the students need training for online education
Beyond the Rona Podcast is recorded in Logan, Queensland on Yuggera country. We acknowledge the traditional owners past, present and emerging.
If you’re interested in coming on the show, please contact us, we would love to hear from you!
Episode Transcript
Tim Hill 0:00
We’re recording today on the lands of the Jagera people and we pay our respects to the traditional owners here past, present and emerging.
Tim Hill 0:15
Hello, everyone, I’m Tim, I’m a digital marketer and small business owner. Welcome to Beyond The Rona.
Andrea Wildin 0:21
Hi, everyone. I’m Andrea. I’m a former registered nurse and midwife and a community advocate.
Tim Hill 0:28
We’re on a journey to find what our community members think are the big problems and big solutions – now that we’re emerging from the pandemic. And today we’re chatting with Nic Robertson, a high school teacher and entrepreneur. Thanks so much for joining us, Nic.
Nic Robertson 0:44
Thanks Tim, thanks for having me. Hi Andrea. How are you?
Andrea Wildin 0:48
Hey, I’m doing well. Thanks.
Tim Hill 0:50
You’ve been teaching Nick for 13 years, right?
Tim Hill 0:55
And can you give us just a really kind of quick overview of your teaching career?
Nic Robertson 1:01
Oh, well, I started teaching because I was, I used to be a chef used to travel the world with cirque de soleil. And one of my jobs was to teach the young performers how to cook. And I just, I just, I just loved it, I love teaching and seeing the journey. So when I got back from from working overseas, I started my degree in teaching. And ever since then, I’ve been teaching at schools in Logan, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. But yeah, so quite a diverse array of experience I’d say.
Tim Hill 1:34
Yeah, and you’ve also got a side hustle. (Yes). You’re the you’re the founder of an app called SwapU. It’s not not in the education space. But tell us Yeah, tell us about that. Yeah, thanks Tim. So SwapU is all about well. It’s about swapping. So. So my belief is that we have so much stuff in the world, we have so many things. And we hold on to them beyond their use. So when we can’t sell things, we just, we just hold them, or we keep them under our beds or in our garage, and we don’t move them and eventually, along comes hard rubbish day, and we throw them away. And when in fact, there was so many times that we could have swapped them and got new experiences. Swapped a basketball for hockey stick and started a new sport, or swapped a dirt bike for a jetski or, or tried something new that because we have cash in the way which seems to be the only way that they want to trade. If we swap and trade instead our goods, then it’s my belief that we can have a much richer experience in life. It’s not locked behind money.
Andrea Wildin 2:42
That’s a good idea.
Tim Hill 2:43
It’s a it’s a great idea. I really, yeah, I really love it. Yeah, with that whole need for us to be more mindful of our waste. And yeah, just the amount of stuff that ends up in landfill I think, yeah, this this concept is excellent so yeah, really, really good.
Andrea Wildin 3:02
And it gives, like, I know, with kids, too, because they they kind of have seasons where they want to try different things, you know, so it’s sort of like, oh, this time I want to try archery, oh, this time, I want to try, you know, rollerblading or whatever, you know, and they kind of have seasons where they want to try something that and then it stops and
Nic Robertson 3:23
kids too you know, don’t have don’t have money. And you know, you’ll often see kids trade Pokemon cards and marbles when I was a kid or whatever it was. You use what you had is your currency. And there’s nothing stopping us from being able to do that.
Nic Robertson 3:39
And now we’re going to, you know, when we’re older, ownerships sort of puts a – everybody wants to own something, but I think if you buy something once and swap it 10 times and it’s like you’ve got 10 different things. And don’t let the item own you, you know, that’s the that’s the old, the old saying, yeah.
Andrea Wildin 3:57
Yeah, that’s good.
Tim Hill 3:58
Yeah, great. We’ll put we’ll put the links in the show notes to that. But I guess to take it to take us back to, to education. We’re recording this in December. And although this episode won’t be live until January, right now, there’s a story out in the in the Courier Mail talking about this, this headline of dire teacher shortages in Queensland, and, you know, very sensational kind of numbers in that.
Tim Hill 4:27
This, this is kind of connected to, you know, the the Queensland State Government, mandating, you know, double dose vaccinations in teachers. But now, since you’re on the show, Nic I’m really interested in in your thoughts on this and what are you seeing kind of at the on the ground?
Nic Robertson 4:49
Yeah, well, I think a lot of that is is beat up to sell newspapers. My opinion is I mean, my opinion based on my experience, which is that I haven’t seen or heard of anybody who is giving up teaching because of because of the mandate. I mean, it’s, it’s something that you
Nic Robertson 5:12
I get every flu shot and everybody, lots of people do it. And it’s very common for teachers to get flu shots because kids are so full of germs. I remember the first time I ever my first time I ever, my first day of teaching prac a kid sneezed in my face, and it was just a kid thing, they didn’t mean to do it. Very, very small child. I was sick for, I think, probably two months, because my body had never encountered this, you know, I’d build up an immunity. (kids germs!)
Nic Robertson 5:44
So we have a strong, strong culture in teaching have already been vaccinated. Lots of things anyway. And, you know, I don’t see that happening. But that’s, you know, that’s a personal choice that everyone’s allowed to make as well, but I can’t see it. I can’t see there being a dire a dire shortage. There’s probably lots of other reasons that teachers leave. I love teaching, but it’s a challenge
Andrea Wildin 6:13
I think they are like an older cohort, aren’t they? Like, you know, isn’t it an ageing profession, kind of, like nursing?
Nic Robertson 6:22
Yeah. And so you do find several years ago, actually, they were paying teachers to leave the profession, because it becomes a becomes a job where passion is so important. And they’re finding that people were just staying in the job, because that was the one job they had, but they didn’t really want to be in there. So I think it was about eight, eight to 10 years ago, they were paying teachers $50,000 as an early retirement benefit. So there are many reasons that teachers leave. And this for some people might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I wouldn’t say it’s the lead, it’s going to lead to mass exodus. That’s only a personal opinion
Andrea Wildin 7:03
what I was getting at, though, was like I heard during the pandemic, that the teachers were upset that they weren’t given PPE, you know, protective things, like, you know, masks and things like that, you know, that. And that they felt that they weren’t being protected from, you know, children passing on these COVID, for example, and, and that they weren’t, you know, they weren’t being looked after, you know, especially like, way back in March at the beginning of 2020, you know, where they had the outbreak originally, and they were deciding whether or not to shut the schools and they said, Oh, no, children don’t pass on COVID. They don’t transmit COVID. So you can keep the schools open. And so teachers, you know, they were talking about teachers being kind of feeling let down that they weren’t being protected. And, you know, saying, well, we’ve got a lot of elderly or not elderly, but like older teachers, and so it seems like a bit contradictory. They were saying, you know, yeah, it’s sort of like they’re saying, Oh, no, we’re not being protected. But now it’s,
Nic Robertson 8:11
yeah, yeah, I think that’s been that’s been something that’s happened throughout the pandemic has been a lot of it has been a lot of miss misspeak, I guess, and confusion. And I think the one thing I’d love was consistency across all of this, you know, that that would be great. Because it seems to me that it’s a – if it’s a disease, that it’s going to have one way of acting, and we should all do what we should all do together rather than everybody having their own rules. But yeah, when it comes to PPE, I mean, everybody, you know, you’ve got to protect your workers don’t you. So that’s, that’s important.
Andrea Wildin 8:51
During the pandemic, then did you find that, you know, when they did find that they did have to shut the schools? How did they find the the workloads, you know, that was impacting on teachers, like, what was that like?
Nic Robertson 9:09
That was difficult, mainly because teachers don’t have a lot of training in your online. Online education. It’s a very specialist field. Teachers are trained through their degrees to be in front of kids to be to be essentially having the kids in the same room, seeing the facial cues, being able to have groups working together. You know, the groups there’s also ways that kids leading other kids. There’s a whole bunch of different different techniques that we use as teachers and then all of a sudden you just got yourself, a computer and a whole bunch of kids sitting in their, their lounge room tables are in their bedrooms or wherever they are around around the around the suburbs near you and it’s really disconnects.
Nic Robertson 9:58
So your workload becomes more from a paperwork perspective. But it also becomes more as far as your thinking because you have to think of all new ways of getting the kids engaged. So your brain doesn’t really switch off. So when you think of the word workload, I put it into more of the fact that means there’s work that we do, there’s typing, and all that sort of reporting everything. But there’s also when you when a day finishes you, you’re always thinking and thinking of the next lesson, what you got to do. So the workloads more of a brain load and put that word into the mix. Yeah,
Tim Hill 10:39
In the previous episode, we chatted with Asha and Rosie about their experience, Rosie, in particular, finishing grade 12. And there was definitely that sense that they were talking about around. It seemed like schools really didn’t move fast enough, like sure no one saw this coming. But it was as well, like, you know, what are the things that we can do now. And to really try to put an immediate plan in place, knowing that this thing is going to roll on for quite some time? What’s your perspective on that Nic, as a teacher, and how were schools, able to roll out the changes that they need to make,
Nic Robertson 11:22
I think thats got a lot to do with the resources that the school already had. So a lot of schools were already using learning management systems like Moodle, or schoolbox. So a lot of them already had that that system in place, all they had to do was to just just increase the frequency of the lessons and just to use that as a structure. But if you didn’t have that, already there, then you really, you were behind the eight ball a long way. So really, that that depended a lot on resourcing, planning. And everything that led up to that point, I think schools would be more ready now, of course, because they’ve they’ve had this point, this pandemic occur, but it was mainly the well resourced schools, and even the schools that had somebody on staff that was forward thinking. They were the schools that were always a little bit more prepared for this. So our school, where I teach was very, was very prepared, and the parents were very, very happy. So that was a good thing. But I could also imagine that there were a lot of schools out there that just missed the mark.
Tim Hill 12:36
And this is a really interesting point you teach in a private school at the moment. But previously, you have experience as well in the public school system. And so I think that this, there really feels like there’s very big differences in the way schools have been able to respond to that. But since you’ve got experience in kind of like both of those sides, what are your general thoughts actually, on how how big or small those differences are?
Nic Robertson 13:03
Well, there’s the big I think one of the big ones is the, the Bring Your Own Device within state schools. So you’re encouraged to bring your own device or you also have a school issued device, which you pay on a subscription programme, and you pay for that. But the level of devices that some schools will will give, some schools will have access to. I’ve heard of schools where their device that they were given was a mobile phone. So there were students doing Word documents on a mobile phone, you can imagine an old iPhone 6 trying to do a Word document. So and that was that was a school directive that they were saying you can use a mobile phone to do these things. So I think, you know, this is there’s some real issues there. And, you know, that came down to whether the parents were able to afford to pay. So that’s that was an issue. So you can imagine equity is a real issue around that. But yeah, that’s that was, that was a big one because hardware is a massive thing when it comes to access and, you know, and even Internet access and those sorts of things you’ve got to have, you’ve got to be able to connect into the into the digital highway with it or else you just sitting by the side of the road. So So yeah, so
Andrea Wildin 14:30
I actually heard I’ve read a few things during the pandemic that we had some groups of people who were gathering in library carparks to actually access the internet. Had you read about that? Yeah. You know, to do their homework.
Nic Robertson 14:46
Yeah, I’ve definitely heard about that. That’s an even supermarkets you can get free access and yeah, big, big shopping centres. So it’s, that’s definitely that’s definitely a thing. There’s lots of people out there that don’t have don’t have the money to be able to access. And you know, in a in a system where we pride ourselves on on public schooling, free schooling for all, you know, pandemic was really a problem, we created a problem for those. And really, the, the wasn’t there any more people people weren’t receiving the same, the same access, same
Andrea Wildin 15:24
the same level, yeah, and the same access to the curriculum then because, I mean, if people can’t afford to get access to, you know, an iPad, and I know, NAPLAN was all on online this year. So if they can’t afford to know, NAPLAN isn’t for the child, it’s really for the school. But still, you know, if you can’t afford to get access to the internet, and you can’t afford to get access to, you know, something like an iPad or something, you can, you know, you can use to do Word documents, well, then you are disadvantaged aren’t you? In your education now.
Nic Robertson 16:02
And on top of that, as well. The facts, the fact remains that not all, not all learners are the same. So you know, there’s lots of different ways of learning whether you learn in a place that you prefer to learn from your peers, you prefer to learn from a teacher, you prefer to learn by yourself, you know, this, this pandemic, had everybody learning the one way, you all had to learn essentially, you relied on being a self led learner, whilst you had the teacher in the background on the screen saying do this and do that, and there was prompts within the programmes that you’re using, essentially, you had to get yourself up to do it, he had to be, you have to be really inspired to do it. And when you have kids out there doing subjects and they’re not really interested in, they’re not going to find it very easy to be inspired to to do those subjects. So So marks are going to drop in, there’s going to be a big, big gap in some of those, some of those subjects moving forward, because computers can’t do it all we have to have a teacher in front of you. And I know, lots of people say no, you don’t do we are humans, we have to have human interaction. And a feedback loop within within when a teacher is standing in front of 30 Kids, what they’re seeing is like an air traffic controller, there’s so many things happening, so much information coming back and forth. And you’re juggling a lot of things. But it’s it’s a rich environment, and kids are learning all the time within that environment. But when you put them in front of a screen, and as unfortunately had to do there’s going to be some things which are going to suffer. And yeah, in a lot of cases, I couldn’t imagine myself doing grade 12 last year, or, this year. Last year would have been worse, but this year, this is such a massive challenge.
Andrea Wildin 17:51
Yeah, I found that really interesting that, you know, they kept a lot of the like, apparently, I mean, they kept a lot of the special schools open. So that, you know, they I’m not really sure the reasoning behind it, but I think it was so that they could keep sort of respite going more than anything. But, you know, I’m hoping that we kind of move towards inclusive education. Have you heard of this before? Like, where we kind of move everybody into the same school? I know that with the pandemic, you didn’t have any naughty kids in your classroom, then? You know, to sort of like, did you feel like it was maybe better because you didn’t have everybody in the classroom? I don’t know.
Nic Robertson 18:45
No, No it’s very, if I wanted to be… for myself, I loved working with kids. That’s what got into it from the surface and all of that. But if I wanted to just be on the keyboard all the time, I probably would have taken a different job, you know, to be a teacher, you’ve got to be interested in working with kids and naughty kids are part of the job and they’re not really naughty. There’s no such thing as a naughty kid. They just challenge challenging in a new, they’re just different. You know, there’s… jails are filled with adults, not not kids. Keep – adults are the problem, not kids.
Andrea Wildin 19:31
Also, the sorry, Tim, did you want to go? Okay, so the messaging that is coming is from teachers, I feel is quite confusing sometimes. But the major message that we tend to hear is workloads and that the workloads are huge. But then, you know, we get the you know, the everyday person says, Oh, well they only work from like nine to three and they get all of the school holidays off. So what are they complaining about? Can you like set the story straight of like, What? What? What is the message? That is the problem with teaching?
Nic Robertson 20:11
Well, I was a teacher- wasn’t a teacher all my life I, I hear their story, I hear the other side of the story. You know, we do work a shorter day in many cases. And you know, I’m on holidays, right now I’m on school holidays, and I get I get about between nine and 10 weeks holiday a year. So I’m not I’m not complaining so much about the workload. And I wouldn’t say it’s a workload, when I look at, when I look at a teacher, I’d say, well, if there was an Olympic sport, we’re like the sprinters, so we’ve got a lot to do in a short period of time. So our our year is more condensed, it’s shorter. So we’re doing a lot in a real quick space and time, we got to get all the assessment done, we got to get an event organised, we’ve got to get, we’ve got to take care of the kid who’s just thrown up at the same time is as making sure this child over here isn’t fighting with the other one.
Nic Robertson 21:08
So the workload isn’t so much that it’s always the same, but during the term time, we go, go, go, go go. And we don’t, you know, we very rarely work from nine to three will always work. You know, most of us anyway, will at least least go from eight to four. So it’s a regular, it’s a regular nine to five days. So the same amount of hours. But yeah, I’d say that the workload isn’t, isn’t, isn’t long, all the time, but it’s really condensed. And when it is, when we are busy, we are very, very busy, and we’ve got a lot of things to do.
Nic Robertson 21:45
But in saying that, you know, I’ve looked at the term structure, I’d wonder why we have four terms. I’d wonder why we go from nine to three, like, so many cars on the road at the same time, every time of the day, what why are we doing why are we still having the same structure for these things, when really, we could, after the pandemic, we could have such a different array, you know, there’s no reason that we have to keep the school day the same, the same length. Because we have online learning, we have other ways of learning, even though it’s not perfect yet, but we could do so many things differently. We don’t have to have, you know, busy traffic hours. At the same time, you don’t have to do all the same ways that we’ve done it, and maybe teaching teachers will be will attract change massively in the next 10 years. And it’s exciting.
Tim Hill 22:38
That I think that that’s such a good point. It’s like, yeah, this event, the pandemic, you know, was like a disaster in so many instances, but has shifted things in such a way that perhaps we can take some learnings from that into the future. There’s this kind of like meme online about, you know, the boardroom table, and everyone’s sitting there with their titles and then there’s like a Coronavirus, you know, bubble sitting in a chair with the with the job title, like digital transformation. And it’s like, you know, that in companies and corporations, businesses that have been able to to actually go remote, introduce flexible work, and just provide a better kind of experience and better benefits for employees interested in this idea, actually, of schools. And I think that, that point you make about traffic, and you know, the school drop offs and pickups, perhaps being staggered, and just kind of working differently. Do you think that there’s other kind of learning and teaching methods that we can take from the pandemic and apply?
Nic Robertson 23:44
Well, yeah, I think there’s, well, you know, you could do a mixture of, you know, what, what parts of digital, digital learning and online learning work, we know that some of it works, we know that we’ve got to get our equity. We’ve got to make sure everybody has that says access if we’re going to do it a certain way. But also, we have so many different kids with so many different opportunities now, and they don’t need to fit perfectly into a box. So giving them the ability to be because really, students now have such they’ve got such a choice. They don’t have to do exactly how we’ve done it before. We’ve said it before. We don’t have they and have to do it the same way. So giving them more options and being able to cater for for their. Their diversity and their learning styles I think would be a huge a huge difference for us.
Nic Robertson 24:42
Because there’s there’s so many things that which are going to change after this. There’s so many ways that students can express themselves and jobs that they can prepare for, by being just being ..Having the ability to have more choice. Now we don’t have to do everything the same way it was before these kids now are seeing there’s so many other ways of doing it. And that’s
Andrea Wildin 25:11
You were saying you can also do your TAFE at school, too now.
Nic Robertson 25:16
Yeah, yeah. So you got you got TAFE at school you’ve got … there’s massive amounts of, of options that kids have so. So we don’t have to, we don’t have to keep doing everything the same way. I guess is my main point. But yeah, you’ve got TAFES in schools, you’ve got kids who were sportsmen, you know, they’re playing particular sports, let’s, let’s get let’s lift them up. That’s a way of a great way of, of learning and showing the show new development.
Nic Robertson 25:49
And there’s also industry getting industry much more involved in schools. Because it’s industry that received the kids after all this training. So there can’t be such a such a disconnect between the two, there has to be a real gateway between between industry and schools. So seeing what they want as well would be a good thing.
Andrea Wildin 26:12
What about kids getting their driver’s licence in school? I mean, because I know that, you know, kids on the south side had a really hard time getting things like lessons during the pandemic. And I mean, they have a hard time getting the 100 hours anyway, because their parents are both working, or they don’t have a car in the family. You know, I mean, how are kids on in Logan supposed to get their licence?
Nic Robertson 26:37
Yeah, that’s that’s a great point. And there’s a lot of, there would be a lot of connections that we could make, to get those kids helped through there’d be a lot of people out there who would have cars, people who have retired that could that could help out and wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t mind helping out. Yeah, I love that idea. And it’s in a safe environment, and so many kids will, will get a car and, you know, get a car and go off and hurt themselves in it. And we, you know, we don’t want that we want the whole community to help every- to help these kids out and to embrace them into the into having a driver’s licence.
Andrea Wildin 27:20
One thing I absolutely love is that they’ve taught kids science, you know, that schools have taught kids science rather than, you know, the political narrative of there’s no such thing as climate change, like, these kids are coming out going. Yes, there is like, and they’re all they’re all going What are you talking about? Like, these kids are really, really smart. Like, yeah, they they know what’s going on it. They’re so much smarter than what these politicians make out.
Nic Robertson 27:57
Science is… Science, isn’t it? I mean, it’s, it’s based on fact… the politics quite often isn’t.
Andrea Wildin 28:05
Yes, yes. And so you can’t -like the politicians just cannot say anything to these kids. Because they’re coming out of school going. No, that’s not true. No, no, we learnt in school. No.They, they’re really, really smart. And and like you say, with their, with their devices, they can just look up the truth now. You know, so politicians just don’t they don’t have it over them anymore.
Nic Robertson 28:33
No that’s right. And, you know, that’s, that’s all for the best probably. Definitely.
Tim Hill 28:42
Oh, yeah, I feel like, you know, a well educated population can take advantage of better jobs, make better decisions, like, you know, when I hear about things like Germany, returning to free, like 100%, free university, where it was interesting to hear that, like, we used to have that in Australia, we used to have that, especially for a lot of the politicians that are in now, you know, benefited from. Yeah, this great opportunity. And then it’s been kind of like pared back over the decades. I think kind of like, somewhat somewhat related to that. And what you were talking about with, yes, skills based and trade based kind of learning. I guess, I will make a general statement, but in the Logan areas, certainly trades are still a big component of the pathways that kids have through into the workforce. Are you seeing any other changes if we just kind of think about Logan? Are there any other trends that are happening at the moment?
Nic Robertson 29:54
I, I’d say there’s one job that I used to have was I used to run a trade training centre so, so trades trades are very strong because you can get straight out of school and just jump straight into into a job and you’re paying, you’re getting paid straightaway. So I’m seeing a lot more apprenticeships starting in grade 11, and grade 12, which is good. So lots of kids have identified by Grade 10 really and this is this has been happening for a while, but they’re identifying by by grade 10, that they’re ready to go into into work. So they start one or two days a week, and they’re into their apprenticeships.
Nic Robertson 30:35
On top of that, one thing that I have seen as well is those kids who are doing those apprenticeships and starting that, they’re already starting to think about what they want to do after their apprenticeship. So they’re going ok. Well, I’ve done this apprenticeship and I’m going to do this for a certain amount of years and then I’m going to jump onto the next thing, so that might be being a carpenter and then going on to doing engineering or something within the same industry. And they’re seeing that because they’ve got both feet in the same thing. They’ve got two feet in different fields. One at school and they’re also in industry. So they’re seeing the connection between education and industry at the same time. And then they’re seeing ok well this is just a part of my life. This is just the first part. I’m going to get this apprenticeship and then I’m going to get on the next thing.
Nic Robertson 31:30
Because as we know we work for about 50 years of our life. If you start working at 17, retirement age is 67 and that’s only going to go up. That’s 50 years. And When you tell a student that, you should see the look on their face. When you tell them, ok You’ve leaving school, you’ve got 50 years before you retire. They don’t – You know kids – That’s why education’s so important. You don’t want to be doing something that you hate for 50 years. Imagine that. You’d want to be doing something that you love. And even if you don’t necessarily love it, You want to be able to enjoy it to the degree where you’re not unhappy every day –
Andrea Wildin 32:14
Because you have to go there everyday
Nic Robertson 32:18
And people don’t want… I don’t think anybody really doesn’t want to have a job. I think people want to be valued and want to add something to the world. Whether that’s volunteering their entire life or doing something. People don’t want to just do nothing. They want to feel –
Andrea Wildin 32:36
I believe that too. Yeah. I believe that too. People want to work. I represent the disability community a lot as well. People say that as well. But. I say that as well. People want to work. Given the tools, given the access to jobs. You know that. We want to work. We want to make a difference. We want to leave a legacy. We want to be able to make an impact on society in some sort of positive way that you feel good about yourself. And that you feel that you’re making a positive difference. And that you’re leaving something behind. That you’re somehow changing the world for the better. You know. And that your reason for being here was… for a reason – That you’re here for a reason. That you’re not here – that – you’re a mistake. People want to feel there is a reason for you making it this far.
Tim Hill 33:40
Hundred percent. Well this has been a really great chat Nic. Before we let you go though, we want to ask you what are your 3 big ideas for how we teach students better into the future. Whether that’s Improving learning outcomes or indeed your experience as a teacher. Would you have 3 big ideas?
Nic Robertson 34:01
Ok so…I thought about these and I just put them down into just single words. So my first one is Change. So this is an opportunity for change. It’s an opportunity to really look at things and to sweep away what hasn’t worked. So Change is one. Let’s move away from the traffic jams in the mornings. The things that we never liked before and let’s look at it differently. Not just traffic jams, I mean there’s so much out there.
Nic Robertson 34:37
Second one is Connection. Connection is important. We can connect online, we can do that but the fact is, that face to face connection is always going to be important when it comes to humans learning from each other. So connection is a massive thing. So keep Connection. Change. Keep Connection.
Nic Robertson 35:00
And finally the last one. Is Training. Because Teachers need to be trained. Kids need to be trained how to learn well if they are going to be doing lots of things online. You can’t just throw this tool which is online learning into the mix and expect everybody to be fine with it. People have to receive training. And I think we’re close to understanding what it is we’re doing now and training is going to be a big one. Training and education is huge throughout our lives for so many things. Tim, you know yourself. You’re always learning a new program. There’s always something new coming out. You’ve always got to add layers and layers on top of your education. Training never stops. Education never stops. So my three are; change, connection and training.
Tim Hill 35:55
That’s excellent. Really really great big ideas Thanks again Nic it’s been really great to have you on. Keep up the great work. It’s a slog being a teacher and I think in community it’s a profession that is undervalued but you are doing an awesome job so yeah thankyou
Andrea Wildin 36:20
We do value you. Thank you for taking care of our next generation Nic
Nic Robertson 36:23
Thanks Andrea, thanks Tim, thanks for having me
Tim Hill 36:26
You’ve been listening to Beyond The Rona. Captioned audio is available on our YouTube channel. And don’t forget to visit beyoundtherona.com to listen to previous episodes or to get in touch with us. Catch you next time.