Week 24: Seeking Support

It's Friday, so that means that it's time for my latest weekly teaching reflection.

To re-cap: I teach twelve 90-minute GCSE English lessons every week to six groups of high-needs pre- and post-16-year-olds in our FE college. We use the AQA English Language exam board, and each term we alternate between focusing on fiction and non-fiction. This term, I've been reviewing how to tackle Paper Two (the non-fiction paper).

Every Friday I sit here with my aching feet and tired brain, trying to reflect on the highs and lows of a typical week in FE, without slipping into the trap of making things sound better or worse than they really are: I'm not looking to glorify or demonise my experiences to get a reaction. Rather, I try to paint an honest picture of my working week.

Lately, I've been struggling with behaviours in some of my classes. This has ranged from repeatedly ignoring Ready Respectful Safe rules such as refusing to put phones away during lessons, to throwing objects around the classroom, using inappropriate language, or refusing to engage with learning activities. Things have been put in place to combat these behaviours: a stricter and clearer phone policy, for example, and consequences for arriving late to lessons, as well as supportive interventions, and in most cases, these have all made a difference. However, there have still been repeat offenders, and after a while, it has begun to wear me down (as I alluded to last week).

Over the course of a month, I booked two sessions with our coaching team, where I was able to offload my feelings, and then earlier this week I sent an email to my manager, explaining the impacts that these student behaviours were having on me: mainly that it was chipping away at my motivation and my resilience. (I have a problem with that word "resilience", and that's a bigger discussion for another day , but what I will say is that I don't want to have to be resilient every day).

After sharing my feelings in an honest and open way, I immediately felt lighter and so much better. A meeting was quickly scheduled where I was able to discuss these issues with my manager and team leader, and they offered some solutions to try to improve the situation.

Yes, it can feel vulnerable and exposing to admit that you're finding things difficult, because there's always that fear of standing out as perhaps the only one who is struggling, and wondering if this makes you weaker or less capable than your peers. But, I'm here to argue that the opposite is true: it takes strength to ask for support; it takes courage to admit that you find things difficult; and that accepting help is a step forwards, not backwards. I am thankful for my manager's support, and I know that they have my back. In collaborating with the faculty that I am currently working with, we found a solution to ease the struggles that I have been facing, and now I know I can move forward without that Sunday evening dread creeping in.

In some ways, this experience has given me an insight into how our students often feel during lessons: that it takes strength to ask for help during a lesson when it might seem like everyone else knows what they're doing, and that there is a fear of admitting weakness. I hope that my students feel just as supported by me as I feel supported by my manager.