On Beginning to Teach

Teaching is a verb.

It’s something that you do.

And this teaching is not a simple act.

It is a complex business that makes many demands on your capacity as a teacher in your classroom or in your studio, your sports field or rehearsal space.

Whatever place in the school that you can now call your own and in which you will work with young minds.

Despite the attempts of policy makers and curriculum designers, resource pedlars and loud voices on social media to make teaching appear straightforward with their 'This is how you must do it' views, teaching is much more than this.

It is an act that involves the ongoing nurturing of children's hopes, aspirations, and dreams, alongside developing their abilities and their opportunities to recognise and meet these goals.

Fondly Remembered Memories

Most of the time, children are not clear on what their path might be. Helping them find their way forward is also a part of your job specification. It involves getting to know the children in your classes, knowing them beyond their abilities in any subject.

What is it about them that will make your lessons attainable and interesting?

What can you tap into to bring a subject alive?

How do you move the curriculum towards the children?

How do you make them feel comfortable in the room?

After all, adults tell us that they mainly remember two aspects of their schooldays – their teachers (good and bad) and school trips.

How will time spent in your classroom help forge fondly remembered, long-lasting learning? 

Part of the Journey

When you see a child in a lesson, you are seeing just part of their journey. The children are simply passing through your care.

Your contribution in your classroom is part of a wider effort from your school to support the growth of that child.

Understanding this can be difficult at times.

Developing a sense of the limits of your responsibility – of what is enough – and the collective nature of our endeavours is an important set of ideas to grasp.

The Main Ingredient in a Child's Success

I am going to suggest the main ingredient in a child’s success at school is trying.

Hopefully, you will see some sense in this.

Trying.

Being bothered.

Having a go.

They all amount to a child investing in their education. Being present and getting stuck in. That’s a real indicator in children that they are doing the best they can.

From trying comes an awareness that they can – and will – be able to do things. That this world is for them.

It is hugely important that children develop confidence. There is a debilitating effect in not having it.

You have an important role in supporting children to believe that they have something worth saying and a contribution to make - that they are more than a passive observer of life.

This I think is your mission.

You Are What Makes a Classroom Tick.

Our children need to be thoughtful, analytical, and empathetic. They need to be able to discern what they see around them and have the ability to make decisions and choices for themselves.

You can guide them to these dispositions and it’s going to take all your growing skill and insight to help children along their paths.

Teaching must not always be looking forward (to when the children are adults). It must also look at the beauty and potential of a child’s life in the here and now.

This is where the well-composed poem recited, a scene from a play enacted or a song performed can make a child shine with belief.

Despite the plethora of modern-day resources you can employ in your classroom, from laptops and educational digital packages to your own PowerPoint presentations, you remain the only real resource.

You are what makes your classroom tick.

You.

Good luck with this new term. Enjoy your teaching.