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Part I Before training to teach
Taking the decision to become a teacher is a big step. Some of us knew at school, when we were taught by a great teacher, that this was something we wanted to do.
Others ā based perhaps on a succession of mediocre teachers ā decided it was most definitely not the career for us.
And yet, and yet ā¦ there's something about the career of teaching that just wonāt leave the headlines, wonāt stop gnawing at our consciousness, whether for good or bad reasons.
A good friend of mine, Ian Gilbert, wrote a book called Why Do I Need a Teacher When Iāve Got Google?. It's a great title and a great book.
But the reality is that we do need teachers. We need great teachers ā and we need more of them.
So this short section is designed to help you in deciding whether youāre definitely going to embark on a new career trajectory into teaching, and, if so, what route youāll take into this noble, but often misrepresented, profession.
Hold on tight: your career as a teacher is about to begin.
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Teaching doesnāt always get the best media coverage. Those working in education can often feel that they are unappreciated and unloved, or that the demanding nature of the job is frequently misrepresented in the media and by politicians. We feel that too many social issues ā from youth unemployment, through obesity and antisocial behaviour, to a shortage of computer programmers ā are blamed on our shortcomings. If only we taught better, the narrative seems to run, then all would be well.
As a result, teachers can often seem prickly and defensive.
Those outside the profession view the regular news stories about how we are sliding down the international league tables or how state schools are little more than unruly menageries in which hapless teachers attempt, ineffectively, to contain the riotous hordes and canāt be blamed for thinking that, at the core of any problems our society might have, is a set of feckless teachers.
In reality, of course, there are good schools and poor schools and, within each, good teachers and poor teachers ā just as there will be good and poor solicitors, doctors, mechanics, lawyers and politicians.
So, if you want to become a teacher, it's worth detaching yourself from lots of the stereotypes. Instead, flick through this book. Look at what teachers say about the job. I asked a hundred of them to tell me what they think of the job. Some are at the start of their careers. Some are gnarly veterans. Some specialise at Key Stage 3 (KS3); others teach mostly A level students. All are real teachers, doing the job day in and day out.
Read their comments and see how you react: whether they draw you in and attract you to teaching as a career, or whether they put you off.
I asked them to write down:
- what they like about the job;
- what frustrates them;
- what one piece of advice they would give to someone embarking on teaching as a career.
Their comments are distributed across the pages of this book. I was struck by their candour and freshness.
Your first impression of the comments of practising teachers may give you a stronger insight into why you are thinking of teaching and whether it's the right career for you.
Talking Points
- Which of these comments are most attractive to you?
- Which speak to you most?
- Do any put you off?
- Do any surprise you?
- If you had to give your two main impulses for becoming a teacher, what would they be?
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Everyone worries before they embark on a new career.
Teaching, however, appears to carry with it distinctive terrors, because it's not just about whether you have the skills and knowledge to do the job; it's knowing also that youāre going to be judged every lesson, every day, by that most discerning group of judges ā the students you finally teach.
That adds a certain frisson to the worry many would-be teachers feel before they embark on their training, before they teach a lesson, before the start of a new term or, indeed, week, because one of the little-known realities of teaching is that we are all prone to worry. Too often, of course, we are presented in the media as complacent idlers who are only in it for the holidays. Or, at least, during our neurotic low points, that's how it can feel.
I know from experience that a very striking feature of the psychological landscape of many teachers is that worry never goes away. It hits its peak on Sunday evenings and during the elongated final hours of any holiday.
Even those of us who are veterans of many classrooms, in many schools, over many years, still get this ā and it invades our dreams. It's the worry that we wonāt be able to control a class, or that they will laugh at us, or that we will show we donāt know or canāt do what we thought we could.
This is the dark, inner world of the teacher's mind, and you might as well know now that, just as the best actors continue to undergo sometimes crippling degrees of stage fright, so even the greatest teachers worry about how a lesson will go. Sometimes that worry is deep and unshakable.
With this in mind, I asked a group of PGCE trainees to make a list of the questions and concerns they had at the start of their training. This was in the early days of their training. I asked a group of School Direct trainees to do the same.
The result is a set of questions that Iām going to use to frame this book. Here's what those about to step into teaching are worrying about.
At the end of the book (on p. 191), Iāll return to them, go through them and make sure each one has been addressed.
For now, read them through and see which ones especially capture how you might be feeling.
- What happens if I walk into a classroom and they all laugh at me?
- Is there a good way to increase my confidence?
- Are there any good ways of learning names?
- What are the best things to write in my personal statement before applying?
- What is the best way to design a worksheet?
- How do I write a lesson plan?
- How open can I be with students about my own belief (religious or political)?
- What happens if I donāt have a pigeonhole?
- Will there be coffee on tap?
- What should I wear on my first day?
- What do I do if a student tells me something personal about their background ā e.g. that they are being abused?
- What should I expect at a job interview?
- How long is it likely to be before I will be teaching unsupported?
- What happens if I donāt like, canāt work with, or fancy my mentor?
- What happens if I get lost?
- What should I do when I hit the wall/get stuck/get weighed down by too much work?
- What happens if students try to address me on Facebook?
- How can I rapidly increase my salary?
- What happens if I train in a really good school with no behaviour issues and then get a job in a school with lots of behaviour issues?
- What happens if my mentor makes lots of mistakes in subject knowledge?
- What should I do if my subject knowledge isnāt good enough?
- What do I do to deal with an unfortunate surname in my first few lessons?
- What if a lesson goes really badly and kids think I am rubbish ā how do I ever overcome this impression?
- How do I find the line between professional and friendly?
- How can I develop my teaching skills outside the classroom?
- What should I wear in school?
- How can I write effective learning objectives?
- How do we keep a workālife balance?
- What do I do if I get flustered in front of a class? Or, even worse, get emotional?
- How do I deal with violence (in the classroom or at break time)?
Talking Points
- Which three questions are most relevant to what you are feeling?
- Which three are least relevant?
- What questions of your own would you add?
What I Love About Teaching
The kids! They make your day when they say great things about your lesson/when they have pride in what theyāve accomplished/when they say something funny/random and it makes you smile.
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Teaching needs talented people.
For too many years ā by which I mean centuries, in fact ā our experience as pupils has too often depended on the lottery of which teacher we happened to have for a particular subject.
Many of us found that we enjoyed and were good at a subject because, for the first time, a certain teacher brought it alive. Many of us chose courses in that subject as a result. I specialised in English because I happened to have an English teacher who inspired me, who made me realise that I could do this subject and who planted in my mind the thought that I too might like to study English at a higher level and then teach it.
Imagine if, instead, we had been taught by someone clueless or hapless or hopeless or dull.
Most of them will have trained as teachers. So, if such people can be unleashed in our classrooms and achieve qualified teacher status (QTS), then is it worth training teachers? Arenāt the best teachers born, not made? From time to time, there are debates about whether really good teachers need to be trained or not, whether they need formal qualifications.
I read one such article this morning, by leading educationist and headmaster of Wellington College in Berkshire, Anthony Seldon. Writing in The Guardian, he says:
The teacher's role is much more akin to that of a parent. It is a great loss that governments worldwide have made teaching much less like being a parent than an impersonal civil servant. No job is more important than parenting, yet no one is suggesting parents go off for a university course to qualify as a parent. Parents pick it up as they go along, and that's exactly the way great teachers are forged.
There is one fundamental difference between parenting and teaching. The former are self-selecting, whereas the latter have to be appointed by those with knowledge and experience. I write this from a conference on Education for Tomorrow run by Singapore Management University. The principals attending are from schools around the world, state and private, and almost all agree that great teaching is a gift that some have, and others will never acquire even if they spend 10 years locked away in a university. Most of us can tell within minutes whether someone has āgot itā or not.
(Anthony Seldon, āTeaching is like parenting: you donāt need to have a qualificationā, The Guardian, 28 October 2013)
What do you make of this? If you are about to embark on training as a teacher, how do you respond to the message that being a teacher is akin to a branch of parenting, that the need to learn the craft has been overstated?
Is the analogy actually correct ā is the teacher's role similar to what might be expected of a parent? And, if it is, arenāt there in fact some parents who definitely would benefit from undergoing some training?
Think of the really talented teachers who have influenced you: was it the case that you could tell within minutes that they āhad itā, or were their skills subtler and less obvious?
Certainly, my thirty years have shown me that, although there are some instinctive teachers ā people who can walk into a classroom and teach with authority and skill ā most of us benefit from a training programme that combines some element of theory with lots of observation of other teachers and the chance to practise the skills you are developing.
The best teachers will continu...
