When learning how to swim, almost drowning is a good start

Gulp!

No matter how much trainee teachers are taught, nothing beats personal experience.?

Learning about being a teacher from reading books or watching videos of teachers’ teach is like watching a demonstration of swimming. Unless you dip your head under the waves, gulp an unexpected mouthful of water, and get confused by blurry vision and distorted aquatic sounds, you won’t know what it is like.

In this series of blogs, I will show you the skills and strategies that a new teacher can develop over time.

But these blogs are not enough. You must strip off your clothes, put on your swimwear and get into the water. Because that’s where the students are, and your learning happens.

First Phase - You are the front of the room teacher

At the start of your career, you are a fresh University graduate with a degree in your chosen subject, full of top-level knowledge and deep understanding. You delight in your ability to relate important details about your subject, at the drop of a hat. You have learned, and now you will teach.

You have a teaching degree, yet your immediate role models are still your previous teachers. You have studied different teaching strategies, but have not yet seen them in action, except perhaps on video or a brief visit to an alternative school.

You start teaching at a Secondary school. It’s not an alternative school, but there are students here and you hope you can make a difference to their lives, by teaching them. It happened for you, why not for them too?

Lesson Time

You usually start your lessons with a roll call. Of course, you must know who is in the lesson and who is not.?

School Administration requires the class attendance lists to be updated every lesson, “for safety reasons”. Registers - collected from Admin at the start of a lesson are delivered to the same place within 15 minutes, or there will be consequences; a scolding visit from Admin.

You raise your voice to silence the students so the lesson can start. How could you begin to teach them anything otherwise, you wonder. It’s what your teachers did.

You start the lesson of the day, according to your plan. You fill your lesson with lots of chalk and talk and face the board whilst explaining and demonstrating what the students need to learn. They had better listen. This type of question will be on the exam paper at the end of term, you know because you have checked the syllabus and past exam papers. It will come up on the test at the end of the week, because you have designed it that way.

Students who speak up whilst you are talking, interrupt the flow of your lesson. You shut them down. You start your explanation again, speaking in a louder voice, to be sure that everyone, even those at the back of the room, can hear what they need to learn.

You are asleep. Your teaching follows your memories of what your teachers used to do. You hand out exercises for the rest of the lesson so they can practice several times what you have taught them. You give the same work to every student, regardless of their ability or interest. They have the same text book, although some students have forgotten theirs at home and must share. You issue pens, pencils and paper to those who don’t have them. How can they do school-work without a pencil, you wonder. And why is it the same students who forget them?

You note that some students are able to do the exercise, others struggle. You see that some students are slow while others are fast. You wonder if some students need remedial lessons, so they can catch up, and keep up. You marvel at your previous teachers’ ability to keep going in the face of such challenges. You struggle on. You persevere, despite the headaches.

Your teaching strategy quickly reveals that the students have a broad range of aptitudes, talents, intelligences, attitudes etc. You wonder how you will be able to cope with them. You wish that some students could be moved to a lower class, so they would not disturb these classmates, and you see that some students could easily fit into the higher class, if only there were enough chairs.

In your ledger, you note each student’s grade for today. Your teachers gave you grades and you liked knowing where you were in the class. In the top three.

At the end of the time, the students file out of the classroom, you give out verbal rewards to the best students, and verbal warnings to the worst.?

Luckily, your curiosity comes to the rescue. Questions pluck at your conscience, “What were those boys doing at the back of the room? What were those girls talking about behind their hands?”

Next

In the next blog, what happens when you let your curiosity guide you in your exploration of another world.

And, in the next blogs, I will demonstrate other essential skills a teacher can develop over time.?

The Author

Martin Richards is an experienced Secondary School teacher who has taught for over 30 years, in many ways from traditional to modern.