It was after I realised i used to be bored during one in all my very own lessons that I knew something was wrong. Teaching is lots of factors, but boring it ain’t. And if i used to be bored, how could I possibly be inspiring my class
In my first few years as a teacher, the inability of boredom was first thing i discussed when people asked me about my chosen profession. “You never end up clock-watching, looking ahead to hometime,” i’d say, “each day just flies by”. People would study me with envy, brooding about all those times that they had stared on the clock of their office setting, hopeful for 5pm. But now, after a number of more years and many reforms, my job now not offers that very same unpredictability.
Sure, the youngsters still pop out with unexpected responses; providing me with hilarious anecdotes and sometimes making me smile. However the job itself now resembles that of a factory production worker. I clock in, deliver the teachings planned for me by some anonymous educationalist, read the stories chosen for me by some book marketing company, send the youngsters home after which mark the books using the marking and assessment code designed for me by some senior leader and not using a class in their own. Step by step, the autonomy of teachers is being chipped away at by individuals who don’t trust us as a way to plan effectively for the kids we teach.
Now i’m certain that somewhere in Middle England somebody thinks carefully and attempts to devise creatively, attempting to imagine their lessons being taught to children around the country. But most commonly, the schemes that my school leaders bought into hoping to ease our workload by scaling down at the hours required to be spent planning have simply given us one other task. Nowadays, the time i might have spent dreaming up imaginative, inclusive and stimulating lessons is instead spent seeking to reformulate the usual lesson into something that may be both achievable and challenging to my class of EAL learners with little or no life experience beyond their housing estate. Instead of attempting to squeeze the square peg of my class into that round hole (“we must teach aspirational lessons in order to not limit the children’s learning opportunities”) i’ve taken to dumbing down my lessons, cutting out any references to culture, history or geography that i believe the kids won’t know, in order that we will be able to instead specialise in what they desperately need; functional English and maths.
Similarly, a few years ago the pinnacle decided that we should always adopt a college-wide marking policy, in order that it’d be clear to all who checked out the children’s work just what feedback they were receiving. When my colleagues and that i queried this, insisting that our marking must be done solely to aid the youngsters to enhance, we were told that the teenagers were only 1 group out of several shareholders for whom we were marking. So now, instead of modifying my marking and the sorts of comments I make in accordance with the learner, every child I teach must comply with the way in which of marking preferred by SLT.
This interfering, ahem, support even reaches so far as the reading books i exploit. After reading a book with my class they had adored and that’s wildly well liked by children in their age around the country, i used to be told that i could not read the sequel with them because “the kids should be exposed to a number of authors”. i used to be then told which books were ordered for my book corner. My handmade guided reading resources designed to suit around books by Roald Dahl and Astrid Lindgren sit, languishing behind my cupboard, replaced by neat little books of short stories, all created to be read in 20 minute slots. They even include a Teacher’s Guide, complete with the questions I should ask and the comments I should make as we read.
So it is how my vivid, varied days became monotone and dull. My exciting lessons filled with enthusiastic learners are getting formulaic sessions where i am going in the course of the motions, and the youngsters, to their credit, continue to work flat out to profit. This can be a tribute to them that they still desire to work flat out in lessons, but it surely makes me sad to never hear them say “that was much fun miss!” on the end of a session, the way in which they used to.
I love my class and that i love helping children to realize, but it surely increasingly feels that teaching is being made right into a factory production line, where any old student wanting a summer job could rock up, read out the questions, follow the formula after which go home. What the present method seems to disregard, however, is that the youngsters themselves must experience the exciting feeling of actually tailored, creative lessons – designed by professionals who know them – which will progress. Let’s hope someone important realises this soon.
This week’s Secret Teacher works in a prime school in London.
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