What does it take to be a teacher?
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21 / 04 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
What does it take to be a teacher?
My next door neighbour left teaching after just 3 months.
On the application form she put down all the right things. She loved children, wanted a challenge, and was eager to reach out to every individual child to make sure that they achieved their potential.
At the interview she had a fantastic portfolio to show. She had achieved high marks in her exams, had been a member of a number of clubs and societies, had done some youth work and had completed her Duke of Edinburgh Award. She was an exemplary candidate.
Even on her training course she was considered to be a high flyer. You would have bet your house on her being a great teacher. But no. She gave it one term and then left.
Why?
I would put it down to nothing other than luck.
She was offered a post at a school that she didn’t like. The staff were not very friendly and the class she was given were disruptive. A lot of new children had joined the class and they simply did not mix well. It was nothing sinister. Quite simply it was a case of poor group dynamics. If you factor in the sheer hard work of coming to terms with the initial impact of teaching a large class, understanding the new systems, and the volume of administration that all teachers have to cope with. There you have it. To her the job just wasn’t worth the candle.
And why? Because someone had forgotten to point out that most of us do not go out to work solely to work, we go out to work to meet people. (I still remember thinking that my first headmaster was going a bit over the top when he said that he would work for nothing if he could afford to - but when you have heard it a hundred times from different teachers, then you have to start believing that there is some truth in it.)
This applies to us all. Put us in with a group of people that we like and we will put up with a lot. A charismatic head teacher can hold together the most awkward of schools. A happy staff room can even make moaning fun. A class full of delightful children can compensate for even the lowest of achievement levels because in the end league tables and the opinion of those measuring your school are secondary. What counts is personal satisfaction.
Nothing has yet been devised that can predict this.
Consider the drop out rates for teaching. It really is in the interests of training colleges to get a good number of years teaching in return for their outlay. But they don’t get it. One teacher in three gives up within five years. Fifty percent of TEFL teachers never teach more than two years abroad.
The interview is notoriously unreliable in predicting good college candidates. It isn’t much good at getting the right teachers for the right schools....and when all that is taken into consideration, how do you predict how a teacher is going to interact with a class?
A supply teacher I know has taught the same lesson to any number of pupils. Sometimes it will go well. At other times it will be hard going. The special ingredient is not the lesson content. It is not even him or the way he teaches it. No the main ingredient is how the class works as a group. Admittedly that can be managed to some degree and some of it comes down to the dynamism of the teacher but so much of it is luck...the same luck that runs through a lot of teaching.
You need luck to get a suitable first post. You need luck to get a school that is neither at the bottom nor the top of a league table so that there is scope to progress without pressure. You need luck to have supportive staff without any cliques or grudges. You need luck in having parents who appreciate what effort you put into teaching. You need luck in having a good bunch of children to teach and you could even get a good luck bonus by having a caretaker who doesn’t kick up a fuss if the room is left untidy.
Given all that luck you will find teaching is the best job in the world – but it helps if you work hard it as well. Garry Player, the South African golfer was fond of saying, “The more I practiced, the luckier I became.”It applies to teaching too.
