Abstract
COVID-19 has highlighted and exaggerated the quintessential(ised) early childhood education teachers through their essentialisation. In Aotearoa New Zealand, teachers were labelled ‘in support of’ essential workers, whereas in Australia they were ‘Essential Workers’. Although these locales’ COVID-19 responses differed, the quintessentialism of the workforce was, and is still, present. Through Marx’s notions of commodity-value and labour-power, the authors draw on interviews, Facebook dialogues and policy responses generated in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia to analyse a series of ways teachers spoke back to the label of (quint)essential. Within this political commentary, a possibility arose to unyoked ‘quint’ from ‘essential’, peeling away the notion of the selfless, maternal early childhood education worker to reconsider the ideal teacher post-COVID-19.
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