I’m so proud and happy for all the teachers and educators and staff who are on strike today across Queensland.

It’s their first strike since 2009, and it’s well and truly needed.

Teaching has become a physically and mentally impossible job in this state over the past 50 years, and they deserve everything they’re asking for! (Scroll down to see the needs they’re asking for from the Qld government.)

As a student teacher (called a preservice teacher in Queensland), I was so hopeful going into my first prac this year.

But although the students were DELIGHTFUL, and the school itself was excellent, and I was receiving positive feedback from my incredible supervising teacher, I’m starting to think I may never be a teacher in this state.

Despite arriving early and staying late every day, I still found myself having to frantically finalise my lesson plans during the lesson before.

I had to attend multiple staff meetings, do lunch duty multiple times per day multiple days per week, help with marking assignments, deal with constant tech difficulties in the EdQld tech set-up, endure judgements from senior teachers who were not a career changer like me, and more.

There was almost no time in the day to take care of your own physical needs, let alone to get ahead of the workload.

Toilet breaks? Multiple teachers said they had multiple UTIs per year because of the systemic lack of time and support.

Oh, and I was taking 3 weeks off from paid employment to do it!

But at least once you become a teacher, you get paid for all that extra work, right? Well… Not really.

If $84k a year for a first year teacher sounds like an okay number, just remember that $84k actually equals just $32 an hour.

That’s just $7 more than Australia’s minimum wage of $24.95/hour.

Also remember that for that $84k, you are expected to:

• You’re probably working 10 hours a day (7am-5pm)…
• And you’re working in the holidays, with unit prep, professional development, etc….
• Run school programs and services, like before school music rehearsals, lunchtime tutoring, and Wednesday afternoon sports…
• Many school leaders and parents expect you to magically transform the behaviour of every child…
• You have a growing number of students who need extra support in the classroom, or who are coming to school from literal poverty…
• And MOST teachers (72%) suffer from PTSD and/or vicarious trauma from the abuse on them and their students in and out of the classroom (Oberg, 2025)…
• And you basically can’t have social media if you like staying employed…
• And people keep telling you to your face that they’ll replace you with an AI bot any day now…

So that’s what I’ve been thinking about for a year and a half!

Is it a coincidence that conditions for teachers have been progressively getting worse since it changed from being male-dominated to being a majority of women teaching in the 1970s-90s?

Of course not – because our government has long been dominated by rich, straight, white men, who have consistently de-prioritised any industry where women work. That’s misogyny in leadership for you.

But let’s get into what Qld teachers are asking for with this strike action:

• Pay that matches what teachers in our neighbouring state of NSW get.
• Staff shortages – and I have a whole post ready to go about the reasons why Qld has a teacher shortage, so watch this space!
• Class sizes to be capped at a reasonable lesson (it’s currently capped at 28).
• A reasonable workload.
• Hiring teacher aides and school counsellors to help support all of the students with learning difficulties and other disabilities, because although inclusion is wonderful!, it takes more than one person to implement.
• Time to do the lesson planning and assessment marking!

We need to change a lot of things to make teaching a rewarding profession again.

So to each their own, but I reckon don’t keep your kids at home today. Let the government see the chaos their policies have inflicted because they abandoned the people working in one of our most important professions.