Cate Blanchett may have played teacher to her four children during lockdown, but she ended up learning something herself — teaching is no easy task!
The actor explained that while things got off to an "amazing" start, her 7-year-old daughter, Edith, quickly realized her mom wasn't a professional.
"I was amazing for two weeks... My older kids were fine; they would self-direct. But I had to sort of do my 7-year-old, and I realized that I couldn't even teach her grade 1 math," Cate said on The Project.
She continued, "She sniffed that out after 14 days. I was a dead duck. There was no respect there."
In order to keep the lessons going for her daughter, she had to change her voice and her appearance to be more like her usual teacher.
"I had to dress up as her teacher. I had to put on her teacher's voice. She wouldn't start the classes until we had an array of stuffed animals, all of which had the names of all the people in her class," Cate explained.
Cate added, "It felt like some weird kind of cross between The Muppets and MasterClass. It was quite traumatic actually."
Overall, the experience reaffirmed Cate's respect for teachers, explaining that they should be fairly compensated like they are in Finland.
"In Finland, which has the highest and most respected level of education anywhere, teachers are paid the same as doctors and lawyers. And they should be because the level of skill to engage a bunch of, often disinterested, students for 8 to 12 hours a day is one of the most profound, respected skills of any profession anywhere," Cate concluded.
