Why teach? (Extract from The Art of Being a Brilliant Teacher; Gary Toward, Chris Henley and Andy Cope)

Being a teacher is not an easy job, but brings great rewards. How many jobs are there where people are given the power and tools to change lives on a daily basis? As Ginott said,

“I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.” (Ginott 1975)

True, there are those who should not be in the profession and have found themselves in a job with a group of people with whom they have little empathy. However, most teachers, the vast majority, go to work each day to make a difference. The average teacher in a secondary school might teach at least one subject to five different groups of around thirty pupils each week and have responsibility for the pastoral care of a further thirty. Multiply that total of one hundred and eighty pupils by forty years and you find that in their career many teachers will have had the opportunity to influence over seven thousand young people.

Without doubt teachers have ups and downs. The kids aren’t always easy, there’s a lot of baggage brought in to schools; a wide variety of home related problems, from abuse to splits of parents, or those with no parents, or parents who have low literacy or low income. Many schools have a great spectrum of pupils, from those whose parents are millionaires to those whose parents are on the bread line.

 As we have found out, there are many rewards, but none so great as finding that the pupils respect you, and are loyal to you and the school. Teachers often bump into past pupils, many of whom may not have been easy and would, no doubt, have had the odd tongue lashing. Typically they will shake a teacher’s hand, smile and be pleased to see them. Often they will say things like, “I was a little bugger wasn’t I, Miss?” The use of ‘Sir’ and ‘Miss’ seems to die hard and twentysomethings will still greet their old teachers using these terms. In fact, recently we heard of an association of past pupils and teachers of a school where octogenarian ex-pupils and even older ex-teachers had only just managed to get around to first name terms!

A wide variety of parents exist in our world and it is they that really hold the power. While teachers can influence life from the classroom, it's parents who influence most of the long term. We’ve come across abusive parents, parents who nurture learning at home, parents who are unsupportive and parents who are very supportive. Just as we rarely tell the bus driver that he’s done a great job driving through that traffic, it is rare that teachers are congratulated by parents. It’s our job and folks take it for granted that we should do it well. On the other hand, we’d be straight to the poor old bus driver if he’d braked too hard and caused our shopping to scatter down the aisle of the bus. Similarly, in teaching, it’s easy for parents to give the teacher who has given their son a detention for poor behaviour a hard time, especially when the son in question has not explained the full reason for the punishment. However, most teachers understand the rules and accept this as ‘part of the job’, taking the plaudits when they do come graciously and reflecting wisely on those who knock them.

So why teach? Is it the pay? Well, it's not bad and comparatively much better than it was in the early 1980s. You'll not become rich though. Or will you? In our view, if you get it right you'll be rich beyond money. You will have changed kids' lives; their loyalty, their honesty and their warmth will have astounded you. Every now and then something will happen that will remind you that what you do has had a dramatic and positive impact on someone. And you'll be proud to be a teacher!

Those light bulb moments come out of the blue. Take Billy for example. Billy was a bright lad, working well above the expected norm for his age group. At the age of 14 he has resisted all attempts by a wide variety of teachers over the years to persuade him to have higher aspirations. Billy wanted to have an easy life and stroll into a job with little challenge. Billy’s light bulb moment came on a school visit to Paris. While walking up the Champs Elysées Billy tugged at his group leader’s arm and said, “How do I get to be a teacher? I want to do what you do and inspire kids like this.” Now that’s why teachers teach! It has nothing to do with the fact that Billy wanted to become a teacher. It was the simple fact that one teacher had unlocked the door to a talented young man possibly realising his potential.

Even the moments of seeming madness can make you glad to do the job. In a career most teachers will have plenty of chuckles over misunderstandings by their pupils.

Trigonometry is when a lady marries three men at the same time. (Daily Mail)

Noah’s wife was called Joan of Ark. He built an ark, which the animals came onto in pears. (Daily Mail)

Henry the Eighth had an abbess on his knee, which made walking difficult. (Daily Mail)

You just don’t know when the next one will come out of the blue.

As a teacher you will give out plenty of pats on the back, commendations and other forms of praise, and just occasionally you’ll get some too. Treasure it. If it comes in the form of a card, a letter or an e-mail, treasure them. Keep them in a file or pin them up. After a difficult day, look at them. Over the years you hopefully will build up quite a collection from different sources. These are priceless little reminders of how much you mean to those you teach and those you work with. Not only that, if you bear in mind we humans are not quick to praise people for doing their job well, the collection you build up will also represent a multitude of silent satisfied customers. 

Every single day is different in teaching. You might have the same lessons, and the same groups or pupils daily, but because we are interacting with developing young people, challenging them to learn, each day brings different experiences and rewards. The school environment and school day are also organic too. The timetable, the curriculum, sports days, productions, concerts, parents’ evenings and meetings, to name but a few, ebb and flow throughout the year. This may seem to complicate matters, but in fact it adds spice to school life. A great school has a life beyond the classroom and these schools are filled with great staff, creating those extra learning opportunities and developments that breathe joie de vivre into the day. It is exciting and inspirational teachers and support staff create this environment. Because of that, pupils learn and those who created the learning bask in the reflected enjoyment. 

The most typical response from trainee or newly qualified teachers when asked, “Why on earth do you want to get into one of the most stressful professions in the world?” is something which suggests that they quite simply want to make a difference. Is there a better reason? Changing lives for the better is pretty hot stuff. How many professions apart from maybe doctors and nurses have such an impact? Not that many. It comes once again back to Ginott. That awesome power of being the Weather God of the classroom means that by getting the seasons right, your pupils will flourish.

Oh, and the holidays aren’t bad either!