Almost Half-Term
My hope of recording my thoughts on a daily (or even regular) basis went by the wayside as soon as I took up my teaching post. Where's the time? Instead, I am in the middle of my sixth week.
The question most on my mind these days is simply, "Why?" Why did I get myself into this? It is very hard work and I don't even like kids.
I was out of work and my wife suggested that perhaps it was something I could do. And after all, the Government was and is running ads saying, "Those who can, teach." I've taught within other contexts. Never successfully with young people, but I've taught. At the end of the day, it seemed easy enough. After all, I know more than they do about almost everything.
So it was just a matter of getting on a PGCE course for a year and then taking my pick of all the jobs out there. This was before there was doubletalk from the Government of reducing the number of teachers and increasing the size of classes. This hasn't happened yet, but even so, there were few jobs, especially in my region of the country.
As it was, I got my job by default. I was the only applicant to show up for interview. I would have had to have done a pretty bad job on the interview lesson to have not gotten it. Even at the inteview, I got the feeling of, "Is this the best we could do?" My interview lesson wasn't brilliant, but it was at least competent. But honestly, who couldn't do a decent lesson in an artificial environment?
Neither a SCITT PGCE course nor an interview lesson offer any preparation for true nature of teaching in a state secondary school. In the last six weeks, I have discovered why teachers moan about paperwork. I would like to apologise to all of the trees that have been killed just to fill the top of my desk with endless reams of paper. All of this paper is photocopied with an endless variety of information, all of which is somehow critical to my performance as a teacher.
Unfortunately, I don't do admin. Never have. In every job I have held or business I have owned, my weakness has been any adminstrative responsibilities. I need a PA. NQTs don't get a PA. I have been told that thanks to work-life balance agreements with the teaching unions, the paperwork has been reduced. I'm sure there are a lot of happy trees out there, but I can't imagine what it could have been like before.
The biggest misconception I had going into teaching was that it involved teaching. I can teach. I've done it for years. No, what I do is attempt to manage the behaviour of immature individuals confined to a closed space by the force of law. I am a glorified prison guard. I attempt to convince these people to use the time of their confinement to learn something they don't want to know. They are not there to sip from the font of knowledge which I possess and offer to them for the small sum of less than £19,000 per year.
It is much more like tricking a finicky toddler into eating vegetables. This trickery is called lesson planning. Every lesson has to start with a "settler" to try to get them quiet. Then there is the "starter" to introduce them to the lesson. Then the main part of the lesson should contain a variety of pupil-centred (as opposed to teacher-led) activities. Any information they get will be somewhere in a textbook or photocopied worksheet. After short enough activities to keep their gnat-like attention span, it is all summed up with a "plenary" to reinforce what they have learned. All this takes place in less than 60 minutes.
I've run out of time to rant tonight. Got to be up bright and early for another day on the cell block.
The question most on my mind these days is simply, "Why?" Why did I get myself into this? It is very hard work and I don't even like kids.
I was out of work and my wife suggested that perhaps it was something I could do. And after all, the Government was and is running ads saying, "Those who can, teach." I've taught within other contexts. Never successfully with young people, but I've taught. At the end of the day, it seemed easy enough. After all, I know more than they do about almost everything.
So it was just a matter of getting on a PGCE course for a year and then taking my pick of all the jobs out there. This was before there was doubletalk from the Government of reducing the number of teachers and increasing the size of classes. This hasn't happened yet, but even so, there were few jobs, especially in my region of the country.
As it was, I got my job by default. I was the only applicant to show up for interview. I would have had to have done a pretty bad job on the interview lesson to have not gotten it. Even at the inteview, I got the feeling of, "Is this the best we could do?" My interview lesson wasn't brilliant, but it was at least competent. But honestly, who couldn't do a decent lesson in an artificial environment?
Neither a SCITT PGCE course nor an interview lesson offer any preparation for true nature of teaching in a state secondary school. In the last six weeks, I have discovered why teachers moan about paperwork. I would like to apologise to all of the trees that have been killed just to fill the top of my desk with endless reams of paper. All of this paper is photocopied with an endless variety of information, all of which is somehow critical to my performance as a teacher.
Unfortunately, I don't do admin. Never have. In every job I have held or business I have owned, my weakness has been any adminstrative responsibilities. I need a PA. NQTs don't get a PA. I have been told that thanks to work-life balance agreements with the teaching unions, the paperwork has been reduced. I'm sure there are a lot of happy trees out there, but I can't imagine what it could have been like before.
The biggest misconception I had going into teaching was that it involved teaching. I can teach. I've done it for years. No, what I do is attempt to manage the behaviour of immature individuals confined to a closed space by the force of law. I am a glorified prison guard. I attempt to convince these people to use the time of their confinement to learn something they don't want to know. They are not there to sip from the font of knowledge which I possess and offer to them for the small sum of less than £19,000 per year.
It is much more like tricking a finicky toddler into eating vegetables. This trickery is called lesson planning. Every lesson has to start with a "settler" to try to get them quiet. Then there is the "starter" to introduce them to the lesson. Then the main part of the lesson should contain a variety of pupil-centred (as opposed to teacher-led) activities. Any information they get will be somewhere in a textbook or photocopied worksheet. After short enough activities to keep their gnat-like attention span, it is all summed up with a "plenary" to reinforce what they have learned. All this takes place in less than 60 minutes.
I've run out of time to rant tonight. Got to be up bright and early for another day on the cell block.
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