Some Ideas about Teaching
Amazing Teacher!
It was Mr Thompson – whose
Geography lessons so thrilled me – who made me want to become a teacher. Little did I know, as an innocent probationer 30+ years ago, what the
profession really involved, or what it would have become by the next
century. In a world where we want to attract people of the right calibre
into the profession, what today can we say to prepare potential teachers for
the culture shock of finding out what teaching is really about?
I think it would
have to go something like this:
‘You will become a member of the contradictory profession,
and you will never do it right!
You will have to learn to carry personal professional
responsibility for your teaching and your pupils’ results – whilst
increasingly being told what to teach and how to teach it. Whilst being told what to teach, you will still be expected to make
your lesson content interesting. Although being told how to teach,
you will be blamed when pupils do not achieve at the required level.
You will be asked to do whole-class, didactic
teaching, stretching the able pupils and giving leadership from the front;
whilst at the same time being a classroom manager, setting problem-solving
group-work at a level appropriate to the pupils’ abilities.
You will be required to take account of pupils’
social backgrounds, personal trauma, intellectual limitations, personality
traits and religious qualms – but you will be judged primarily on their
academic results.
If a child behaves well in your classroom, you must
acknowledge its achievement by rewarding the child; if the child misbehaves
in the classroom, you will accept that it is because you have not built up
an appropriate relationship. If one child attacks another, it is because you
have not cultivated a suitable classroom ethos. And if the child truants, it
must have been because your lessons were not stimulating enough.
You will be required to impose standards and
to make your pupils work, yet you lack any real power to make anybody
do anything, and are desperately vulnerable to complaint and accusation. You
must learn to maintain your authority whilst continually backing down.
You must work directed hours, including after-school
activities and meetings, and return home to lesson-preparation and marking;
yet you have to realise that no-one believes you work beyond 3.30 p.m.. You
will spend as much time in preparation as in teaching; but most people will
think that all you do is turn up and start talking.
You must learn that 50% of the population assert that you let
the pupils run wild, whilst the remaining 50% think that you are ‘picking
on’ their children. You will spend your career trying to persuade,
cajole and force the pupils into improving their standards, yet most people
believe you have a secret agenda to encourage pupils to fail. Politicians
will proclaim their support, but score cheap points condemning eponymous
‘bad teachers’.
You will need to understand that – after four years
of higher education and then continuous, ongoing in-service training –
everyone will think they know better than you about education. And you must
understand that, for all your qualifications and training, you will always
be ‘wet behind the ears’ to most people: a ‘man amongst the boys, but a boy
amongst the men’.
Despite your qualifications, you will start at a
salary roughly equivalent to that of MacDonald’s management trainee. Unless
you advance to senior management, you will finish, 40 years later, well
short of the salary earned by a MacDonald’s general manager (by the way,
MacDonald’s company benefits include private health care, company car,
clothing allowance, bonus scheme, telephone assistance, and stock option and
purchase plan – as a teacher you will, of course, get none of these).
The only way to be happy as a teacher is to know how to hold
on to the vision, whilst losing the illusions. You will be doing the most
precious, fascinating, exciting and fulfilling of all jobs, and also the
most stressful, aggravating, depressing and mundane. Your vocation is
to unlock the riches of learning to young minds; but you must realise that
most of your time will be spent lugging books, filing worksheets and filling
forms.
And when the child passes, you will acknowledge that it is the result of the
child’s efforts – but if the pupil fails, you will wonder what more you
could have done to help that pupil gain a better grade.
Amazing teacher! In your classroom you grow the future.
Follow your vocation with care, hold on to your enthusiasm
with determination, and learn - at the end of the day - to be proud of
yourself..
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