'I quit teaching after 15 years. What I witnessed should worry every Australian parent.'

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After 15 years in the classroom, I left teaching in January. I still work in a school, but now I'm in the leadership team.

I witness something devastating most days: teachers ducking into the toilets for a little private cry. The reasons educators are reaching breaking point — or have left the profession entirely — are complex.

But if I had to pinpoint the biggest issue affecting teachers, it's this: student behaviour, and we simply don't have the robust support systems teachers need to manage the surge in extreme violence and abuse they're facing.

The reality is that many of the students in our classrooms have multiple risk factors.

Too many students arrive at school without having eaten breakfast or having lunch packed—a reflection of the poverty and stress many families are experiencing.

Screen time has become unmanaged in overwhelmed households, and children are accessing pornography online without the support systems in place to help them understand the dangerous messages about violence and the degradation of women that this content normalises.

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Trauma-impacted students are in every single Australian classroom. Teachers get a little bit of trauma training if they're lucky. They don't learn how to teach trauma-impacted students at university. 

Classrooms have changed dramatically and there are no relief teachers left to take the classes when our remaining teachers get sick. There are no relief teachers available, let alone permanent replacements for those who've resigned

Teachers are tired of being spat at, sworn at, bitten and having chairs thrown at them. They are tired of planning for lessons that get constantly interrupted. 

Teachers have left the profession never to return. Talented, passionate teachers have walked out on their careers. They do not do this lightly. They leave because they're burnt out, and it will take years to fully recover from that burn out. 

Teachers have been abused by parents and students with zero to minimal support from the Department.  A year 6 boy at my school recently threatened to kill his teacher and received a one-day internal suspension then he was back in the room with her.

She resigned. She was an excellent teacher. Where is the process for protection for our teachers when threatened like this? The system is completely broken. 

The students are not safe either. Schools are a dangerous place. Being online is a dangerous place. I've had year 4 girls being called fat by their peers online. Teachers try to protect the students, but there's little they can do. Teachers can't help what happens on devices in the home. 

Earlier this month, I went on strike for all the teachers who left, for all those who turn up every day and for me who gave so much at such a huge cost emotionally and physically. And I strike for the students.

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Teachers are sorry it has come to us striking. We actually want to teach, but we are powerless to protect students from what is happening across Australia with the harrowing rates of domestic family violence, homelessness, poverty, inter-generational trauma, and rising living costs.

To the students reading this: you deserve better than the situation we're all trapped in.

It goes without saying that there are many children who have not had childhood trauma and live in secure households with loving parents.

But the issues I've presented are genuine and speak to a big population of our students. It's all dependent on where your children go to school and what is happening behind closed doors.

But it doesn't change the fact that the government is not addressing the needs of the teachers or the students who are struggling every day. 

Feature Image: Getty. (Stock photo for illustrative purposes only)