If Educators Cannot Flourish, Neither Can Children

In the past week, two educators have trusted me with stories that have been bravely shared, but incredibly hard to read.

One came from a teacher on the cusp of retirement after forty years in education. She described her early years of teaching favourably. The collegiality, the stimulation, the fun, the deep support given to her as a graduate teacher and the professional learning that set her on a lifelong path in literacy education. There was trust in teachers. There was play. There was a belief that children were whole people, arriving in classrooms with bodies, emotions, imaginations, social needs and intellectual possibilities.

Her final week of teaching has looked very different.

This experienced teacher described having to evacuate two classes because of violence. The children were six. She watched another experienced teacher resign to protect her own mental health after being left to manage persistent and unsafe behaviour without the depth of support needed to make any real difference. She described children who are dysregulated, disengaged and overstimulated while teachers are expected to deliver an increasingly narrow curriculum.

She shared that she “no longer recognises education”.

The second story came from a tertiary educator and facilitator. She has worked in classrooms, literacy facilitation, initial teacher education and assessment support. Her story carries a different kind of pain. She described the loss of work in literacy when particular versions of “structured literacy” and the “science of reading” became dominant in public and policy discourse. She was careful to acknowledge the importance of teachers understanding how sounds work in words and how words work in texts. She is not ‘anti-structured literacy’. Her concern was with the narrowing that followed. The loss of balance. The shrinking of pedagogical knowledge. The disappearance of common sense about the development of the whole child.

In her work with student teachers, she sees the consequences. Many students now enter school placements where teaching is mediated through slides, scripts and formulaic programmes. The rich practice discussed in tertiary workshops is often difficult for them to observe. They are learning about responsive pedagogy while being placed in classrooms where responsiveness has little room to breathe.

Her concerns mirror the recent media shared by others in the tertiary sector.

Her story also moved into assessment. She described feeling morally conflicted about work connected to Ministry priorities and said she tried to make the work meaningful by focusing with schools on the purpose of assessment and reporting for learners. She met schools where they were and worked to deepen their thinking, but the cost to her own wellbeing became too high. After a lifetime of work guided by moral purpose, she broke.

These stories are personal. They are also deeply recognisable.

I share these stories because I think they reveal something important about the emotional weather inside education right now. Beneath the debates about literacy, curriculum, assessment, behaviour and achievement sits a quieter layer of professional grief. In my itinerant role, moving in and out of classrooms and kura around Aotearoa, the story is the same. Teachers are exhausted. Demoralised and overwhelmed. The weather in their rooms, and across their schools - while they work hard to keep the sun shining, have a heavy atmosphere that those who know education well can recognise.

Many educators are grieving the loss of an education they still believe in.

That grief is easily misread. It can be framed as resistance to change, romantic nostalgia or professional defensiveness. I think that reading is too shallow. The educators who send me these stories are not afraid of learning. They have spent entire careers learning, adapting, mentoring and serving children. They have changed practice many times. They have carried new curriculum documents, assessment systems, behaviour approaches, digital tools, pedagogical movements and policy resets.

The grief I hear is more precise than commentators are framing up. It is not a dislike of change. It is not the holding on to ‘nostalgia’.

It is the grief of seeing children reduced to data points, reading groups, behavioural problems or curriculum delivery targets. It is the grief of watching play, the arts, drama, movement and story pushed to the margins when they are often the very experiences that help children become available for learning. It is the grief of knowing that relationships sit at the centre of effective teaching while policy settings continue to privilege pace, coverage and compliance.

There is also moral distress here.

Educators enter this profession with a strong sense of responsibility. They want to do right by children, whānau, colleagues and communities. When they are asked to participate in practices that sit awkwardly with what they know about children, development, learning and equity, something inside them begins to fracture. They can comply outwardly while feeling compromised inwardly. Over time, that gap becomes exhausting.

This is why the current sector mood in Aotearoa feels so raw.

Teachers and principals are carrying the accumulated weight of reform, workload, behaviour complexity, learning support shortages and public mistrust. Many are trying to make sense of curriculum changes while managing children whose needs have become more complex. Principals are being asked to lead improvement while absorbing a level of operational, emotional and political pressure that would strain any human being. Teachers are being told to raise achievement while the conditions that support deep learning are often the very conditions being squeezed.

The stories arriving in my inbox are not isolated laments. They are signals.

Even PISA is pointing toward flourishing

I keep thinking about the timing of all this because, internationally, the conversation about education is moving in an interesting direction. The OECD, the organisation behind PISA, has been advancing a framework for education for human flourishing. This matters because PISA has had such a powerful influence on global education policy. For decades, systems have looked to international comparisons of reading, mathematics and science as signals of educational quality. Those measures have shaped policy ambition, political rhetoric and public anxiety.

Now the OECD itself is talking about education in broader human terms.

Its Education for Human Flourishing work asks systems to think beyond a narrow human capital model. It speaks to purpose, fulfilment, human agency and the kinds of lives young people are being prepared to lead. It positions flourishing as a significant direction for future education policy and the ongoing development of PISA.

If even the authors of PISA are pointing toward human flourishing, then Aotearoa needs to be very careful about rushing further into narrowness. A system cannot claim to value flourishing while steadily removing the conditions that allow children and educators to experience it.

Flourishing is not an abstract ideal. In education, it has very practical requirements.

Children flourish when they are known deeply by adults who have time to notice them. They flourish when curriculum is meaningful, relational and connected to their lives. They flourish when there is room for curiosity and for sustained attention. They flourish when their bodies, cultures, languages, interests and identities are not treated as interruptions to learning.

Educators flourish under conditions that allow professional judgement to be exercised with integrity. They need trust, time, relational safety and access to meaningful support. They need leaders who are not drowning. They need assessment practices that illuminate learning rather than flatten it. They need curriculum that leaves space for children to encounter the world with wonder and seriousness. They need policy settings that respect complexity.

Teacher and principal flourishing cannot sit on the edge of the conversation as a wellbeing extra. It is foundational infrastructure.

The OECD has also recognised teacher wellbeing as a systems issue, particularly in the context of shortages, turnover and the declining attractiveness of teaching. Its work on teachers’ occupational wellbeing links the quality of working environments with the wellbeing of teachers and the quality of teaching. That is hardly surprising to anyone who has worked in a school, but it is significant when stated at system level.

A depleted teacher cannot keep producing relational abundance forever. A principal under sustained pressure cannot endlessly absorb complexity without consequence.A facilitator whose moral compass is repeatedly strained cannot remain whole simply because the contract says the work must be done.

We need to talk more honestly about the human cost of the current direction of travel.

This does not mean rejecting explicit teaching. It does not mean abandoning evidence, assessment or accountability. It does mean refusing to let any one policy movement, programme or ideological frame consume the whole educational landscape. Children need skilled literacy teaching. They also need play, conversation, movement, art, agency, time, belonging and adults who are well enough to respond to them with wisdom.

The retiring teacher’s story reminds me that education can be joyful, demanding and deeply purposeful. She began her career in a system that invested in her, trusted her and allowed her to build a love of literacy through professional learning and collegial practice. She leaves still believing in children and still committed to creativity, imagination, drama and story.

The tertiary educator’s story reminds me that professional conscience is one of the most important resources we have in education. When thoughtful educators begin choosing their words carefully because balance has become dangerous, we should pay attention. When people who have given decades to learners begin taking unpaid leave to recover from moral distress, we should pay attention.

These stories ask something of us.

They ask us to listen beneath the policy language. They ask us to notice the grief inside the profession. They ask us to stop treating educator wellbeing as a personal resilience project when so much of the harm is being produced by system conditions.

Most of all, they ask us to remember that human flourishing begins with humans.

If we want children to flourish, the adults around them need conditions that allow them to think, breathe, create, respond and remain whole. They need to be trusted as knowledgeable professionals. They need to work in systems that make moral sense.

The two educators who wrote to me still believe in education. That is what makes their stories so powerful. They are not walking away from children. They are telling us what happens when a system loses sight of the people who hold it together.

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Curious about the work I do in education around the world?

In 2025, the P-BLOT™, a tool I co-authored as a component of my doctoral studies, was named as one of the 100 most impactful global innovations in HundrED’s 2026 Global Collection. As a result of this, I’m currently working alongside educators and systems in Australia, Canada, Finland, the UK, Nigeria, India and Singapore, sharing learning, supporting innovation, and advocating for what truly matters in education: people, purpose, and professional trust.

If you’re interested in where I’m travelling, who I’m working with, or how this work might support your own context, here’s where you can learn more:

Professional Speaker Profile – Keynotes, consultancy and facilitation

P-BLOT™– Evidence-informed support for behaviour and learning

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