You talk with parents, you co-ordinate the work of departments or teams, you organise excursions, run sports days, you keep records, stop fights, liaise with other schools, you give out locker keys, you supervise activity in the yard and picking up rubbish. You make sure the chairs are put up on tables so the cleaners' work will be easier. You organise fund-raising activities and social events and working bees and performances. You get birds out of the girls' toilets, and, sometimes, too often, you deal with personal tragedies. Teachers' responsibilities are endless.
Teaching is an intensely human activity.
It is interactive at a level that most computers can only dream about. As I accompanied young Tracey Ly on her first day of school earlier this year, I had the opportunity to reflect on the future she might face when leaving school and what this might mean for teaching. Over the past two decades, the professional lifetime of the majority of teachers now working, the circumstances of the work have changed considerably and is will continue to change. For example the diversity of the mainstream student population, the level of instability in the home lives of some students and the range and variety of students' needs in the post-compulsory years have all increased. At the same time parents' expectations related to both the academic and social outcomes of schooling have risen - most visibly in the proportion of students we expect to master the content and skills taught in the final secondary years.