The Teacher Subcultures of Uni High
By Ronan Butt Merton, Elliot Broome, Zifa Tanner-Kamal, Lucas Hunt, Rory Bochner, Sasha Baer, Mason Johns)
Teachers make up an important part of our school’s culture. They are much more lasting as members of the community than students, and it is under their influence that the students grow, developing their own ideas. Investigation of teachers’ subcultures, then, would be important to understanding how students get to be as they are. Are teachers morally responsible for how students at this school turn out? Can they be blamed? The next series of articles focuses on what teachers at this school are like: their opinions, personalities and stories.
“I don’t mind a bit of chatter… I think a lot of school is not just about learning, but also development of social skills.”
Ah, the infamous George Campbell. It’s hard to picture the music wing without him and his sarcastic-corridor-quips. But where does he stand next to the other Uni High teachers?
I would describe Campbell as a “Casual Comic”. The Casual Comic is the kind of teacher you can be relaxed around - they will rarely raise their voice and keep things pretty light and humorous.
As he says in the interview, “During class I’m pretty relaxed, I like to make a few jokes. If a student is overstepping the line I’ll have to draw that back a bit but my line is probably a bit further back than other teachers.”
When asked about what subculture he was a part of, he said this: “I’m probably part of the music teacher subculture… But I’m not quite sure what that means.”
To paraphrase, he describes the Music department as the quieter, less obnoxious sibling of Drama, there is still a performance aspect, but the teachers tend to keep to themselves. “We [Music teachers] tend to sit in our own little space… I hardly ever see a maths teacher unless, y’know, I pass them in the corridor.”
When shown our Rorschach test, he described the image as: “A pair of lungs… is this a psych evaluation?” This is clearly representative of his background as a trumpet player.
With his dry wit, laid back nature, musical interest and reservedness, I would conclude by describing George Campbell as a rare cross between a Greaser and a Music-nerd.
“Mr Paatsch is [my] nemesis”
Although one of many, Bridget Costelloe’s biggest issue with the maths department is its lack of cohesiveness. “I don’t think you’d look at a maths teacher and immediately think ‘maths teacher’” she remarks derisively.
Maybe she would hate them less if they were more identifiable. Maybe if Mr Paatsch looked less like he was trapped in the 90’s, he would be more popular amongst English teachers. English teachers are definitely a sub-culture of their own, and Bridget Costelloe certainly views herself as the archetypal English teacher. Shapeless black dresses, big earrings, red lipstick, funky shoes; these are all functional aspects of the aesthetic, she says.
When asked to comment on the subcultures today, all Bridget had to say was that she held in the highest regard the rise of the use of eyeliner. If Bridget were growing up in 2021, she would probably be an e-girl.
Authentic, creative and rebellious
The art department. Full of creative people with creative ideas, one of these creative people is Louisa Thurecht - an art teacher at our beloved uni high - and from the all of 3 minutes I spoke to her, I was able to gather some of her valuable thoughts on the art department and the school in general.
While Ms. Thurecht studied and greatly enjoyed Biology in year 12 - even more than art - she mostly took joy in “cutting up the dead things and then drawing them.” which is the most art teacher sentence I have probably ever heard. When asked if she thought she belonged to a subculture at the school, Ms. Thurecht was very sure that she did not, and seemed set on the fact she was different to other teachers - we were not given more of an explanation - very ominous. She was, however, very aware of other subcultures at the school, some of
Which she listed, I will list them again for you now;
Vegetarian lefty leaning feminists
Greens voting
Tattoo wearers from Brunswick
Carefully considered, well dressed and contentious teachers
Old school teachers
And when she was asked if these subcultures had anything to do with the department they worked in, we were reassured, that they definitely did, “oh yes, absolutely”
Ms Thurecht showed us that the art department was is in fact as “authentic, creative and rebellious” as it’s made out to be.
“Rock and roll - dancing!”
Allan Wittick, a unihigh icon. He may teach both Economics and German, but he is most known as a beloved german teacher. Always dressed neatly and armed with confectionery, he is greeted with enthusiasm everywhere. According to him, his demographic is ‘people who work their mobile phone with your finger and not your thumb’ (boomers). He may be older than your average teacher, but his style and charisma is timeless. He belongs to the LOTE department, which he describes as a considerate and linguistically diverse group, with a quirk for cleanliness ‘unlike other subcultures/departments - not naming anything’. When asked about student subcultures, he believes the strength of the school is that ‘...that no one cares about subcultures - we are are not defined by these groups’. If Mr Wittick were a teen in 2021, he would be into “Rock and roll - dancing!” (a rising tik tok dance star perhaps). He believes that as students move through departments, they get a taste of many subcultures and people, which aids them in becoming rounded individuals.
Ms Ward is the head of the library department at Unihigh. At school she enjoyed subjects like english, “which came fairly naturally”, to here, but also enjoyed subjects like art, where she “got to be creative”.
On the library department: because of the library department’s close connection to the other departments of the school, providing research materials and literature to students and staff, Ms Ward could not pick a department which is most different from the library. Regarding a ‘sibling department’ to the library, Ms Ward nominates the English department. She says, “we have a lot of ways that we collaborate with the English department… especially with the reading program from Year 7 to 10”. She feels that the library department differs from the English department and the other departments of the school, because they “quietly get the job done and do what needs to be done”, going largely unnoticed.
When shown our magnificently unscientific Rorschach test (for which we used a collection of different ones for different teachers), Ms Ward saw a bat from one side, and a pair of lungs from the other.
As for a subculture, Ms Ward doesn’t feel like she’s part of a specific group, but a broader culture of teachers who are, “invested in trying to find learning opportunities” and who, “care about similar things”. You can choose her subculture for her!
The writer of this article was unable to carry out an interview with a member of the UHS IT team, but would instead like to discuss perceptions of the team in the wider community of the school as they are a vital and well-known part of our school’s culture.
In the high-speed information era we live in being able to use the internet seems an obvious priority to a student, yet so many put it off for so long each year. Why? Students feel they cannot work through the myriad tasks laid out on the instruction sheets left to them by the IT team even after years of experience, yet even year sevens are expected to be able to, yet no student at this school would able the person they are today if they didn’t have to struggle to learn, and the constant issues faced in every stage of being educated at this school shape a culture of keeping calm and carrying on.
The IT team is a formidable faculty in this school through their force of personality, and for this they have shaped our school’s culture.
Teachers don’t seem to interact in our school. Maybe this is a bad thing but the faculty seems happy enough and this author’ll be damned if they aren’t being taught, which is often cited as the main function of a school.