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- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
This book will take the NQT through a journey which starts with interviews, leads them through the first visit before taking up the job and then into the first hectic weeks and months. Light in touch but rich in content, it can be read around the pool during the holidays before the start of term or kept by the bedside or in a desk drawer for an emergency flick through once teaching gets under way! It expands on the stuff that teacher training touches on, but importantly provides a refreshing look at the nitty-gritty stuff that most training doesn't! Includes: - getting a job - dealing with workload - discipline - preparing eye-catching lessons - dealing with parents - pastoral care - being a form tutor - dealing with colleagues - dealing with boys - getting involved in school life - taking trips - marking - assemblies - career development and much more... A brilliant book for NQTs. Click here to view other titles in our successful Art of Being Brilliant series. The Art of Being Brilliant series was a finalist in the 2017 Education Resources Awards in the Educational Book Award category.
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD
Free-range education
Does anyone ever read the foreword? In this particular case, please do …
As well as being a student of the relatively new discipline of ‘positive psychology’ (the science of happiness and well-being), I also masquerade as a children’s author. That means I get to do loads of school visits. More often than not, I arrive at 9 a.m. (which is a bad time to arrive at any school), sign in and hang about in reception while parents fluster around paying trip money to the receptionist behind the glass. Late and unkempt children are rushed through the door and I sit, trying to get my name badge to stick on, while I wait for whomever.
‘Whomever’ eventually arrives. They are always lovely. Stressed but lovely. And occasionally I catch a natter with the head teacher before my gig begins, but they are busy people so it’s rare.
Except, just occasionally, that doesn’t happen. You can sniff something a little bit different from the moment you arrive. You are ushered into the head’s office while someone grabs you a coffee. You are alone – in the head’s office! Yikes! And you can’t help but notice there is a big blue box file marked ‘Cunning plans’ on the shelf. Like it! There is a wall crammed with postcards and thank-you notes from kids and parents. Like it a lot! You inspect the pin-board and there is a picture of a bloke and some kids playing didgeridoos. Like it a very lot!
And then the door explodes open and the didgeridoo bloke breezes in and shakes your hand so firmly you hear something crunch. He’s the bloody head teacher! And he’s closely followed by some sort of luvvie who grins and pumps your hand up and down while spouting all sorts of ‘Carry On’ double-entendres.
Welcome to Gary and Chris’s world. Combined classroom experience of 150 years (just kiddin’, chaps) and still with bags of enthusiasm, energy and the right amount of quirkiness. It’s hard not to like them (believe me, I have tried) but, more importantly, it’s impossible not to respect what they have achieved and what they stand for.
Education has been through some tough times in recent years. As someone just starting out in the teaching profession, it won’t have escaped your notice that there are all sorts of goings on in schools – rumblings and mutterings that sometimes erupt into something a bit shouty on Question Time. And the BBC always reports on the national NUT conference, where the biggest teaching union seems intent on portraying teaching as the career from hell.
And, to be candid, I used to be a bit critical of the teaching profession. I had a ‘proper job’, you see. I delivered training for companies, which was all very important, grown-up and responsible of me. And my job allowed just four weeks’ holiday. Imagine, four measly weeks. So the grumbling educationalists got on my wick. I would roll my eyes whenever the annual union foot-stamper banged on about terrible pay, conditions and pensions. I used to luxuriate in the irony that bullying is outlawed in schools yet these teachers thought it was perfectly fine to boo and heckle the secretary of state for education. In fact, they were so badly bullied that eventually they stopped turning up at the conferences. That was until I started delivering my workshops in schools. I soon realised that it was, on a conservative estimate, ten times more challenging than a corporate day. And also (on a good day) ten times more rewarding. I have come to appreciate the sheer workload of teachers and teaching assistants. This book sets out to be inspirational and positive, but I may as well tell you up front, teaching is a physically and emotionally exhausting profession.
Over the last few years, I have metamorphosed into one of the shouty people, a defender and champion of those in education. And I have come to a few stark realisations.
First, there is a chasm between an awesome teacher and a standard teacher. I guess there are chasms in all jobs, but teaching is probably where it shows the most (and maybe heart surgeons).
Second, it matters. The job of teaching really and truly matters. You are not manufacturing widgets in a factory or scanning Sunny Delight at Sainsbury’s; you are shaping the lives of young people. I’m struggling to think of anything more crucial.
Third, I have yet to meet a teacher who comes to work to do a bad job. I doubt there is a single one who wakes up thinking, ‘I’m determined to have a real stinker today.’ Teachers want to be awesome. They are, almost without exception, motivated and passionate about their work.1
The problem is that the system is getting in the way of teachers being brilliant. The ‘system’ (Ofsted, rules, procedures, safeguarding, discipline, paperwork, marking, schemes of work, lesson plans, peer observations, risk assessments, targets, etc.) has been designed to stop poor teachers being poor. It is there to catch the bad ones, but the problem is that it also clips the wings of the good ones.
And then there is every teacher’s favourite bugbear, the ‘c’ word: change. Most folks are willing and able to change if they have some say in it or see the sense of it, but the closer I’ve got to the teaching profession, the more I see that many of the changes are imposed and pointless. The result is exhaustion, stress, burnout and, in some cases, serious illness. Hence the ranty foot-stampers.
So, how do Gary and Chris maintain their youthful ebullience and sparkling repartee when others fall by the wayside? That is a very big question, but the short answer is they ‘get it’; the ‘it’ being an understanding that it’s all about relationships and feelings. They understand that if a teacher (or an entire school) can create an environment where pupils want to come to school, because it’s such an awesome experience, then there will be giant leaps of learning. Indeed, the difference between wanting to come to school and having to come to school is the ‘it’.
Chris and Gary acknowledge the importance of league tables and targets but realise that, rather than browbeating children with the literacy and numeracy stick, you are more likely to achieve your targets if the learners feel respected, involved and inspired. And that is summed up in one word – engagement. If you boil this book down to its bare bones, it’s all about engagement. I think that might be the ‘it’ again.
As an outsider looking in, I suspect that many teachers are so focused on their targeted results that the system has become more important than the students. It’s the educational equivalent of battery farming, and the result is pretty much the same. Most schools are doing just fine; they follow the standardised, neatly packaged formula that churns out results. Teachers work inexorably harder, kids are pushed until the pips squeak, that’s just the way it is. And that’s fine if all you want to achieve is ‘fine’.
But this book is called The Art of Being a Brilliant NQT. It’s designed to take you into the rarefied atmosphere of ‘world class’. But to be world class you have to dare to be a little bit different. And it can be hard to dare when the stakes are so high. Isn’t it safer (and easier) to do what all the other teachers are doing?
Probably. But think of this book as the free-range approach to education. Farmers know that to get the best eggs, the chooks need to roam freely and explore. They need space and fresh air. The hens are happier and, hey presto, the eggs are much better quality.
I reckon this book will set you up to be a free-range teacher. Stretch your legs, stretch your mind, stretch your limits. We know that happy children produce their best work. Guess what? So do happy teachers!
Andy Cope
(Andy is a best-selling author and international speaker. He is on his way to becoming the UK’s first ever ‘Doctor of Happiness’. And, yes, that title does make him cringe.)
1 I say ‘almost’ because I once met a business studies teacher who had ‘DILLIGAF?’ written on his register. When I asked him what it meant, he explained, ‘Do I Look Like I Give A F***?’
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to arguably the best job in the world. The pair of us often debate whether it’s teaching or the medical profession that might be the most important job in the world. But the best job, for us, has to be teaching. Seeing the long term development and success of those you nurture. Watching the light bulb shine as a student suddenly ‘gets it’. Having that inner sense of pride when you know you have made a difference in someone’s life for the better. Even better, getting a pint bought for you by an ex-student who valued your support a few years earlier. Okay, we’re really only in it for the beer! In actual fact, that does sort of sum it up. We’ve both lost count of how many pints we’ve been bought over the years, including at a reunion last year of Gary’s first tutor group from 1983!
What we want you to do is be proud. Be proud of your profession. Be proud of your role and your contribution to the lives of youngsters. We want you to sidestep the people our mate, Andy Cope (the fella who wrote the foreword), calls mood-hoovers – you know, the moaning media, the groaning government and those glass half-empty colleagues who really shouldn’t be in the job. We want you to be super-teachers and to whirl into your classroom like men and women possessed, inspiring all who cross your path. We’re going to give you lots of top tips and little gems of wisdom that will make you feel like you’re wearing your pants on the outside!
Before we begin, here’s a thought. You are a newly qualified teacher. So let’s draw a link to what you might be thinking when you confront a new intake at your school. You will be looking at them and wondering just how much learning you can stuff into them to help them become the best they can be. We’re sitting here peering out of the page at you right now doing exactly the same thing. How good can you be? How far can you go? Have you thought that there is a career here with the potential of school leadership somewhere along the line? You might be aiming to become a brilliant teacher, but you might also step onto the right path to become a curriculum leader, assistant head or special educational needs coordinator. Whatever it is, we are going to help you get there. We will point you in the right direction to be able to shout, ‘Pick me!’, when it comes to promotions or career opportunities.
Still with us? Good. Before we get into the real nitty-gritty, here is our first top tip section. We like lists, as do most kids, which is why you are going to find plenty of them scattered throughout these pages. And, as for our style, don’t expect a heavy textbook type tome here. We know you have a busy life and haven’t got time to be wading through the statistics, government white papers or what the research shows from this or that university. Don’t get us wrong, though, those books do have their place (Gary’s got two holding his office door open), but this book is about what, in our experience, works. It’s full of stuff that you can use on a daily basis to make your teaching both enjoyable and successful; stuff that you can’t pick up from a textbook or a course.
There is nearly seventy years of combined experience here to help you. Put differently, that means over 50,000 lessons. We also want you to laugh. In fact, that is our first top tip: laugh with the kids. Have fun with them. If you can blur the lines between having fun and learning, then what you get is great learning.
FOR STARTING YOUR CAREER IN TEACHING
♦ Get in early! Whatever your start time, make sure you arrive with plenty of time. You can get a cuppa, check out the day ahead, do a bit of networking and be ready to go on the ‘B’ of the bell. Not only that, you will send great signals to the head teacher.
♦ You have a stressful job so plan ahead to reduce stress. We had a colleague once who thought he could do without a diary. Oddly, he went down like a lead balloon with colleagues as he constantly forgot what he had to do and where he should be. Plan, plan, plan and stick to your routines.
♦ Did we say it was stressful? Like lots of teachers, you will want to stay late to mark and plan. Make sure you give yourself at least one night when you leave by 4 p.m. and do not go home and work. As above, try to stick to your rule.
♦ Get a buddy. Find someone who you think you can learn from and work with (not a mood-hoover). There is nothing like sharing ideas, finding solutions and the general banter you can have with a good colleague. (Besides, when you decide to leave, you will need someone to organise the collection for your present!)
♦ Join in. Get involved in activities outside of the classroom – for example, a staff do, the parent–teacher association or a school fair. It will give you opportunities to develop relationships with colleagues who you may find it hard to meet during the normal school day, and it shows that you want to be part of the fabric of the school.
Finally, here is the biggie: the number one crucial thing you need to get right if you want to be successful in teaching. We can sum it up by saying it’s all about relationships, but here is the quote that defines everything about what we think great teachers are like:
I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. 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 humor, 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.
Haim Ginott2
Read that quote? We suggest you read it again. Look at those words; the power in them. Get it wrong and you can destroy confidence and future aspirations. Get it right and, boy, you are a brilliant teacher. When we run our NQT courses our delegates tell us just how fired up they are to ‘make a difference’. Well, this says it all: ‘joyous … inspiration … humor … heal … de-escalate … humanized’. These are the traits of a teacher who helps to create the lives and the futures of young people. We want you to aspire to do that.
It’s unlikely you ever saw the 1970s TV series called Columbo, with Peter Falk playing a bugging eccentric investigator. Just when his suspects thought he had finished his questioning, he would turn back with one last thing to ask. If you didn’t see it, there is bound to be an episode on the internet. They are worth a watch, at least once, as you can use some of his questioning techniques in the classroom.
So here’s our Columbo-style, one last thing: in the teaching profession, we call the focus of our attention by all sorts of names – students, pupils, youngsters, kids. The latter is an interesting one. Kids. We once met someone who thought it was derogatory. We say, get a life! It’s a term of endearment, in our view, so use it without fear, as teaching is all about kids! Sometimes what we call our learners formally is dictated by the age we teach; sometimes it’s down to the tradition of the school. As there is no fixed code, we are going to use them all here.
Just be brilliant!
1 Haim Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers (New York: Macmillan, 1971).
Chapter 1
GETTING INTO YOUR CAREER
A finger in the wind!
There are thousands of schools out there; a pick ’n’ mix of every flavour of educational establishment waiting for the right teachers. Let’s not be too hasty though. You may well be qualified, you may well have had a great year achieving your NQT status, but this is a buyer’s market. Good teachers are hot property, so if you fall into that category, or have the potential to be good or outstanding, you can shop around.
So, it’s worthwhile setting out how to choose your best-fit school, as well as how to apply and how to approach your interview. We acknowledge that a lot of this information is fairly straightforward; however, over the years, we have discovered that ‘common sense’ is by no means ‘common practice’.
First, let’s get the types of school sorted. The pick ’n’ mix metaphor really is true. Never before have there been so many different types of school, so you need to know what you are getting yourself into before you accept a job and sign a contract. We are assuming you are sharp enough to know the difference between nursery, primary and secondary schools and the different permutations within those phases. Even so, watch out. Some areas have strange versions of these, with middle schools starting at Year 6 or Year 8 and primaries ending at Year 5. It’s crucial that you check this out to make sure it’s really what you want.
So, just to make sure you are fully equipped before we go any further, here is a summary of the main types of schools in the UK at the time of writing.
Local authority schools
These schools come in all phases and are monitored by the local authority. These used to be called local education authorities and, no doubt, will be called that again in good time. One thing you will find out about education, if you stick around long enough, is that there are few new ideas and we often return to the past wrapped up in shiny new packaging. These schools employ teachers via the local authority, with pay and conditions of service managed by the authority’s human resources department, usually at something called County Hall or City Hall. Typically, salaries, working days and holiday patterns for these schools have been agreed across the entire local area. If you have children of your own, it’s always worth checking term times to avoid finding yourself in a job where your kids have different holidays to you; a childcare nightmare!
However, there are differences even within local authorities because some schools have a structure that has been inherited from former grant maintained status. These schools were some of the first to be autonomous and not beholden to the local authority, and, as a result, many have retained the role of ‘employer’ themselves (actually it’s the governors of the school – more about them in Chapter 9). In the grand scheme of things, this shouldn’t be a worry, but it’s worth finding out if the school follows local pay and conditions or not.
Academies
An academy school is a state school that has opted out of local authority control and become a charitable trust. Often the clue is in the name – for example, the Frank Evans Academy – but not always; some schools that have converted to academy status retain their original name or invent a new one. As with the old grant maintained schools, it’s the governors who are the employers of academy staff. They are responsible for setting the school’s pay and conditions of service and have a huge degree of autonomy in this area. If you apply for a job at an academy, make sure you check this out. Most will follow the local plan, but in some cases there are radically different conditions of service with unusual holiday patterns and/or working hours.
Academies can also be part of a bigger group of schools, linked together within a larger trust. Often these schools have head teachers who are, in turn, led by an executive head teacher with responsibility for all of the schools in the trust. Typically, the whole group will have the same pay and conditions.
Free schools
Free schools can be set up by anyone who meets the requirements in an application process set out by the government. This means they do not have to follow local authority policies and may have very different pay and conditions.
Faith schools
A pick ’n’ mix all of their own! The most common faith schools are Roman Catholic (often named after a saint) and Church of England schools, but depending on your location, you may find others, such as Sikh and Islamic schools. These schools may have admission criteria linked to the associated faith but will not necessarily be exclusive. Again, ensure you check the pay and conditions policy.
Independent schools
As with state schools, there are a wide variety of independent schools. While the fact that parents, in most cases, have to pay fees may act as a natural filter, which could mean that you have fewer challenges with kids who have neither the inclination nor the aptitude to become great learners, you may also find a pressurised expectation to produce results, as paying parents expect a good return on their fees. However, as a teacher you will probably benefit from smaller classes and there are often very good facilities.
And there’s more …
Within all of these different types of schools, there are also single sex schools. Boys’ schools and girls’ schools can be very different in how they ‘feel’, so make sure you are comfortable in that environment.
Every single school has its own ethos, individual environment and unique atmosphere. You can pick up some of this by visiting the school’s website and looking at the latest Ofsted report. However, the teaching world is a small place and nothing beats a bit of insider information, so ask around and you will often find someone who can give you the inside line.
The next step is applying for a job …
