NSW teachers are supplementing their income by selling worksheets,filming sponsored content and sharing teaching tips on social media. Their union and others in the industry say stalling wages have popularised online side hustles,which find a captive market among their overworked peers.
Former primary school teacher Tam Milledge is now working full-time as a social media influencer.Dion Georgopoulos
While a second job for a teacher was once private tutoring or marking external tests,. Some teacher Instagram accounts based in NSW have more than 100,000 followers and offer advice and resources for running classrooms.
A search for products tagged “NSW” on the online classroom resource marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers returns more than 4000 results. More than 3500 of those resources are being sold for a fee,ranging from 50 cents for a single worksheet to hundreds of dollars for a year’s curriculum.
NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos said the trend reflected stalling salaries for teachers in the state. The union has been campaigning for higher wages,.
“All teachers deserve an income that doesn’t require them to look for secondary employment just to pay the bills,” he said.
Teachers who have a second job must have written approval from their principal under its “private and secondary employment policy”.
In addition,the department’s code of conduct stipulates employees “must not use department resources,such as telephone,stationery,computing equipment,mobile phone,other equipment or facilities,or information for approved private employment or to help gain private employment”.
“Activity such as filming in classrooms or selling resources created in the course of employment with the department may be a breach of our code of conduct,” a department spokesperson confirmed.
Incoming NSW Education Minister Prue Car said she was also concerned about financial pressures on teachers.
“Teacher pay is one of the root causes of the teacher shortage crisis. After 12 years of Liberal government in NSW,we look forward to working with the teaching profession on solutions,” she said.
Milledge is also known as @mrslearningbee and has a large social media following.Dion Georgopoulos
Tamsin Milledge,a former assistant principal from Sydney’s northern beaches,is known as Mrs Learning Bee on Instagram. She left classroom teaching at the beginning of last year to focus on her teaching resource business.
Milledge started her Instagram account in 2017 to access a “virtual staffroom” of teachers from around the world,and believes the online community can level the development playing field for teachers.
While she did have principal approval to work on her online business after hours,Milledge said attitudes varied from school to school.
“Social media is a relatively new area and everyone is kind of figuring it out as they go,including the policymakers,” she said.
Some working in the education sector are concerned by the rate at which teacher-generated learning resources are being sold online,.
Dr Ben Jensen,the head of education for consultancy Learning First,which has done policy work for state governments,said the calibre of resources being sold can vary.
“There is zero quality control,and anyone who looks at them will tell you they are of varied quality,” he said.
As her following grew – Mrs Learning Bee now has 100,000 followers – Milledge was followed by several of her students’ parents.
“They loved it;they were super proud of what their children were doing and that it was being celebrated by other teachers,” she said.
But some parents are upset that their children are being used to further the social media careers of their teachers. It is common for teachers who post pictures of children in their class to cover their faces with emojis and to blur the names on written work,although practices again vary.
One Sydney parent complained to the department about their daughter appearing in her teacher’s social media posts. The parent,who asked not to be named as the family still attends the school,said they were confused when their daughter asked where her photos were being posted.
“My daughter would come home each week asking:did her teacher send me the photos? I thought my five-year-old must be mistaken as I never received any photos,” said the parent. “It was because her teacher was taking photos all day to use on her personal business Instagram account.
“I saw hundreds of photos of children from the school on the teacher’s Instagram account taken during school time,which was shocking to see.”
The department spokesperson declined to provide the number of complaints it had received from parents about teachers’ in-classroom social media use.
Milledge said most teachers on social media were very aware of the privacy implications of what they posted online.
“But,to be honest,I do see some teacher Instagrams where I think ‘oh,I wouldn’t be sharing that’,” she said.
Dr Janet Dutton,the course director of Macquarie University’s Master of Teaching program,said new teachers needed to be aware of their legal and ethical responsibilities when using social media.
“But we also really appreciate the power of social media to raise awareness of the world of teachers and build that community,” she said.
She also attributed the growth of platforms like Teachers Pay Teachers to.
“They look to those online resources to use both because they are short on time,and as a potential income stream because we know teachers’ wages have stalled compared to other professions,” she said.
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