Enough with the metaphors and just teach who you are

(edited from an address to staff 2 February 2024)

If those of us who have been teaching a little while have a sense of fatigue by the end of week one of a new school year, spare a thought and remember back to how you felt as a beginning teacher or one starting in a new school or role.

It takes a little while to find your feet, to establish your style or to define just who you are as a teacher, even when you change schools after doing it for a while. Hopefully your colleagues help you settle in and there are induction protocols in place, but establishing your persona as a teacher is an individual thing. Really only you can do that. That is why the start of a new school year is a wonderful time. It gives us that opportunity to recalibrate, to re-establish and to revisit who we are as teachers.

I used to approach the new school year by considering what new metaphor I would attach to my teaching. I think I started, rather naively modelling myself as a dictator - sole power, supreme authority in the classroom.? That didn’t last too long. From failed dictator pretty soon I became the chairperson - how very democratic I thought. That lasted even less. I was voted out by my board by Easter. My next approach was as a firefighter - fireman Sam, putting out all those spot-fires that I had started the year before.?

As a teacher I have been the juggler, the lion-tamer, the zookeeper, the coach; the gardener, tending carefully to the soil, sowing seeds and watering them in.?

I have been the shepherd tending over my flock; the tour guide leading my charges through their journey of discovery. Of course when Dead Poets was released I only ever wanted to be their Captain.? I failed miserably as the sculptor or the potter, spent a few years as the superhero and had a pretty good run as a detective on the beat.

I have often considered my vocation to be like a bridge, linking past and present to the future. Sometimes teaching is also like finding Charlie Bucket’s Golden Ticket. It can be a key to success, a passport to a world of opportunity. I can be an ornament to prosperity and success in the classroom; a flame that lights a dark tunnel.

So what of teaching now?? With the wisdom of a few years on the beat, for me it is now more than ever a ministry of accompaniment, walking together with our young charges through perhaps the most volatile period of their life. And what a pleasure and honour that is. It is like chasing the shadow of God, but never quite being able to catch it.

The best advice I think I can offer new teachers, young teachers or beginning teachers is to forget all the metaphors. You teach best when you teach of yourself with no other guises.? Your task is not to cover the curriculum, but rather to uncover it for your students. ?Your job on a daily basis is threefold - to Be, to Know, to Do - to Be their advocate, Know their story and Do God’s work.