Teachers deserve our admiration and praise, not constant criticism

It's about the general exhaustion we all feel beyond and outside actual viral infection, caused by stress, uncertainty, anxiety and fear, after two years, and countless iterations of the conditions we're living under.

But when it comes to teachers, mental and physical fatigue take on a whole new meaning. We've all been doing it tough, but teachers have been especially hard hit when it comes to taking on greater mental loads than most.

In times of crisis - the kind that affect entire communities, such as natural disasters or pandemics - schools often become flashpoints for panic, worry, finger-pointing and soul-searching.

So much rides on the experiences of children, as parents send them off to school each day in the hope they can escape the worries of the outside world, while still being given the opportunity to build resilience and develop realistic expectations for the future.

The world may well be in the grip of the terrifying effects of climate change, but it's our children who will be dealing with - and hopefully working to reverse - the damage.

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But when we pack our kids off to school while the country is burning, or a virus is raging, it can be tempting to heap our burdens on the people who will be responsible for them while in school - the teachers.

And so, teachers have been shouldering a good portion of the nation's angst since the Black Summer fires, when schools had to deal with the possible effects of the smoke that blanketed Canberra for weeks on end.

There was hardly time to draw breath before the pandemic descended, and we were all plunged into a completely new and terribly confusing reality.

Schools and teachers were, not surprisingly, judged and measured by their varying abilities to adapt to home learning, while still fulfilling their essential roles as educators.

It was an incredibly difficult time for everyone, but imagine being a teacher, dealing with their own school hierarchies, classrooms of children, and an entire cohort of anxious parents to boot.

It's hardly surprising teachers are now experiencing significant burnout. The profession is already arguably underpaid and, in many ways, bafflingly devalued in our society.

But it's clear teachers have borne the brunt of the pandemic when it comes to how children and families have emerged from its worst weeks.

From designing new online learning programs and navigating trauma to, more recently, doling out RAT tests and dealing with rolling absences, teaching has been an ongoing ordeal for many.

Not to mention the fact many teachers have their own home lives to deal with - their own families, children, illnesses, financial issues and all the vagaries of everyday life in extraordinary times.

As in most professions, the majority of teachers are passionate about their jobs and dedicated to educating children and young people.

The last three years of rolling crises have been a testing time, but also an opportunity for greater community engagement, and a chance for the profession to adapt and test itself against unforeseen events.

We should be celebrating this fact - this enduring profession and the work that teachers do, instead of frequently criticising them for being not up to scratch.

Many of us could not have survived these years without the knowledge that our children were in good hands. And they were.

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