Rebel Teachers

I was not a very good student. I didn’t enjoy much about school, and I didn’t do all that well in all but a few subjects that I actually found interesting.

When I left school, I said very assuredly that the last thing I would want to be was a teacher. I never wanted to set foot back in a school now that I had finally escaped (graduated).

One of the subjects that I enjoyed in school and performed very well in was English Language. It was by far my favourite subject, and I was at the top of the class year after year.

Some years later, I decided that I wanted to teach English overseas. I had continued to develop my love of language, and I had begun to spend time in the social work field, where I had discovered another passion for developing people.

So, putting the two together resulted in teaching English. The one thing I had been certain I would never do.

Why am I telling this story?

My suspicion (my observation, to a great extent) is that most teachers are not like me. Of all of the kids in a given class, very few of them will go on to be teachers, and those that do are not likely to be the troublesome students who hate school. It’s likely to be the star pupils who love school enough to want a career in it.

This means that the small minority of students who actually enjoy school, and for whom the current system works, are the ones that go on to teach, and so of course they are inclined to maintain the status quo and perpetuate the existing system, because it worked for them, so it must be good.

But I am convinced that they are not representative of the majority. The majority of students smell something fishy about the standard school model, and many of them can’t wait to get out of it. But it is these very students whose insight we need the most in order to redirect the system.

I am one of those students, and I can say with confidence that I have brought change—sometimes radical—to every institution I have taught in.

I am looking for others like me to build a network and a launching platform for reform. 

If you recognise my story as your own, then you are the key to fixing what’s broken. If we band together, we can bring about real change. We are the ones who can recognise what learners need. We are the ones who will advocate for them. We are the ones who will listen to them. Because we were them.

We are Rebel Teachers.