Keeping it in the family: the Pearsons
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 124 No 3, 23 April 2019, page no. 20
To mark the QTU's 130th anniversary, we meet another family who are Union through and through – this time, the Pearsons.
Teaching and the QTU have been intertwined for Barbara and me from our entry into the profession in the mid-70s. And so it was for our youngest daughter, Genevieve, when she began teaching in Toowoomba in 2014. A Union Rep in her first year, Genevieve quickly became an activist. In fact, at the time of writing, Genevieve has almost completed a term as Acting South Qld Regional Organiser. Barb and I taught for 39 and 38 years respectively, before our retirements at the beginning of 2015.
Arguably, the teaching connection in our family began in the '50s, when Barbara’s mum, Nancy Dunwoody, taught her and four of her siblings by correspondence on the family farm at Seaforth. Education was highly valued by Barb’s parents, with her brothers sent to boarding school and then ag college at Gatton at a time when the family’s struggling fruit and vegetable farm could ill-afford it. Barb instead settled for university. There was no such link to teaching in my family, with mum in the WAAF during the war and then working in the tax department before marrying dad and raising eight children while he established and ran a chemist shop in Rockhampton.
An offer of a teaching scholarship was the catalyst for my decision to become a teacher. Barbara accepted a scholarship to do a pioneering four-year education degree majoring in Science at James Cook. We met early in our first year in 1972, and the rest, as they say, is history.
We were most fortunate to be sent to Ayr SHS in our formative years. Principal Bill Mott was exceptional and the staff friendly and supportive. Our five years at Ayr fuelled our love of teaching and provided us with a host of opportunities that leveraged the future directions of our careers. We left Ayr in 1982 when Barb was promoted to senior mistress at Moranbah.
This move proved a seminal moment for our QTU activism, as we met Karen and John Battams, Marg and Terry Woodford and others in the coal mining community west of Mackay. QTU involvement was by no means new to us. However, John’s influence on me was profound. He had led the Moranbah teachers on a successful five-day strike in support of improved locality allowances, despite then-Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen’s assertion that they could “strike till the cows come home”. The government folded and agreed to a review of the system.
He and Karen left at the end of 1982, and I succeeded John as President and Council Rep of Peak Downs, with the strong desire that QTU members continue and build upon the legacy of the Battams, Woodfords and Gillams etc. The attendance of 80+ members at the '83 AGM was encouraging, and when a few years later, Moranbah High teachers voted by 29 to 1 to go on an indefinite strike if changes were not made to proposed savage increases in teacher accommodation rents, we knew teacher activism was in a good place. As a result, teacher rentals for singles actually decreased and folk in married accommodation paid only a very modest increase. So quite early into our careers, Barb and I very clearly understood the inter-relationship between strong teacher unionism and the ability of teachers to maximise outcomes for students.
We spent the next 30 years in Toowoomba, and it was in this phase that we had our daughters – Josephine and Genevieve.
From a very early age, they enjoyed Labour Day with its marching, singing, balloons and barbecue. It was always marked on the calendar and they soon learned its significance. Josephine became a doctor, and in her second year supported her colleagues who were members of the Australian Salaried Medical Officers’ Federation of Queensland when they rallied against Campbell Newman’s proposed changes to salary structures.
In 2012, during her third year of teaching training, Genevieve addressed a large EB rally of Toowoomba teachers on the folly of the Newman government’s proposal to freeze the salaries of beginning teachers.
Finally, with mum and dad retired, Genevieve is extending the Pearson contribution to Queensland public education into the fifth decade. As she strives to be the best teacher that she can be for her students, Genevieve is comfortable in the knowledge that the QTU, in its 130th year, is integral to ensuring teachers have the necessary conditions and access to resourcing levels that will maximise educational outcomes.