I began my teaching career in 1990, fresh out of university and standing in front of 28 rambunctious five-year-olds in a small, independent NSW school. There was no mandated curriculum, no standardised tests, no professional standards, and a risk assessment was called ‘common sense’.
I’m sure some of those children in my first class had ADHD, were on the spectrum, or had learning difficulties, but I didn’t have labels for them then. I had no idea of any custody issues, but I am sure there would have been. I simply knew that Jamie needed a different approach, Vivienne needed one-on-one attention, and Claire’s quirkiness was something to be celebrated. My job was to figure out how to help each child learn.
It was a different time, a mere 35 years ago.
By 1998, I was the founding principal of Burgmann Anglican School in the ACT. To open the school I had to write the curriculum, draft a handful of policies, and employ suitably qualified teachers. In that first year, I taught full time while carrying the responsibilities of a principal.
Again, a different time. Only 25 years ago.
Fast forward to 2025, and teaching and leading a school has become unrecognisably complex.
Back then, I had some release time to plan and prepare lessons, but yes, I still took plenty of work home. Evenings were spent marking and preparing for the next day. But I wasn’t required to document every adjustment for every learner, or to complete risk assessments for every excursion, camp, or classroom activity. There were no endless streams of emails, no constant parent phone messages, no mountain of meetings to negotiate how I should cater for a child’s needs in my class.
Most importantly, I never lost sight of why I became a teacher: to make a difference in young lives.
I fear that today many teachers are so swamped by compliance, accountability measures, and administrative overload that they are losing that sense of purpose. The narrative has narrowed: making a difference no longer means shaping futures, but “lifting NAPLAN results” or “our school’s standing on the ‘league table’”.
The world is more complex now, and our schools have become governed by politics, legislation, bureaucracy, red tape, and risk mitigation to the point that the joy of teaching has been squeezed out.
“I’m about done”, is a common remark from once passionate and great teachers.
So, the question is: How do we restore the heart of teaching?
It begins by putting tools and frameworks in teachers’ hands that free them from compliance overload and refocus them on what matters: great teaching and learning. That means technology that reduces the administrative burden, leadership that balances accountability with trust, and systems that create clarity without killing creativity.
I’ve seen some initiatives being trialled: volunteers doing playground duty, co-principalship models, or pre-prepared lesson banks. These approaches are well-intentioned, but rarely touch the real issue. Compliance demands, legislative requirements, and accountability frameworks are here to stay, they may shift, but they won’t disappear. And we know governments won’t suddenly find the billions needed to shrink classes or double release time, and paying teachers more only kicks the problem down the road to the next EBA round.
What we can do is reimagine how teachers are supported in the daily craft of teaching. We can give them tools that don’t add to their workload but actively lighten it, technology that makes planning faster and smarter, that captures adjustments automatically, that personalises learning at scale, and that brings creativity back into the centre of classroom practice.
Because in the end, if we lose the joy, we lose the reason anyone wanted to teach in the first place. And restoring that joy, the sense of purpose and possibility, is not just good for teachers. It’s essential for every student in every classroom.
The Vivedus Planner has been designed to bring the creativity and joy back to teaching. The inbuilt AI tool, ViV-iT is a teacher’s personal assistant, supporting their professional growth, generating great ideas for teaching, and taking much of the heavy lifting off them.
