One of the reasons I love twitter so much is that as the new school year begins my timeline floods with pictures of fresh classroom displays, shiny new planners, colour coded timetables and people starting their first year as qualified teachers. Seeing people excited to begin what is arguably the best job in the world can be infectious. A significant portion of these posts will come from ECTs and as the first few weeks get going, the classes arrive, the workload begins and the colder, darker nights draw in it can be hard to maintain the same enthusiasm you had in the late summer days of August. We’ve all seen the statistics published by the DfE that show a third of teachers leave the profession before the end of 5 years, so this is my short love letter to you all about how to keep a grip on your joy through your first year;
- Get to know your school policies…and use them.
With any luck your school should have a clear and robust behaviour policy and you shouldn’t feel the need to come up with your own. Learn it as soon as possible and don’t be afraid to use it. Teachers can sometimes worry that using the policy implies they have poor classroom management or don’t want to be seen as not being able to handle behaviour and so therefore avoid using it. It is your greatest weapon. Along with consistency. Pupils should know the policy but, if you want/need to, remind them of it as often as you need to.
2. Shut out the noise!
Twitter is an excellent resource for teachers. Twitter is also noisy. What you need to remember is that everyone has opinions but they don’t always know each other’s contexts. For every post you see about someone spending the day in school doing displays for their room there will be another post saying how pointless displays are. You can only do what is right for you. Which brings me nicely to my next point.
3. Follow your instincts.
Only you know what is best for you and your classroom. When we are training we are often encouraged to keep a ‘Reflection Diary’ or other document where after each lesson we review its success. It’s actually one of the most useful parts of training, in my opinion. However, once the year starts to get busy it can be something that you no longer have time for, whilst you may not have time to write a ‘diary entry’ about how your lessons have gone that day it can be useful to metaphorically ‘download your day/week’, what did work? What didn’t work? What needs to be tweaked? What else could you try? If your gut tells you that something is/isn’t right, follow it.
4. You will never get it all done…go home.
For the first few years of my career I got to school for 7.30am, I left around 6pm and at the weekends I took mountains of books home which I then spent my entire Sunday ‘marking’, by marking I mean writing almost half a page of feedback that pupils then didn’t read and promptly had no effect on their progress, to me though it proved that I was working hard when someone did a book scrutiny. Unsurprisingly I grew to loath Sundays and I resented my job. I did this because for years the rhetoric around teaching has been that unless you are spending every waking hour working you aren’t a very good teacher, being stressed and tired was what I thought I should be. LIES. It can be tricky and will take time but find a way of working that is manageable for you. There will always be ‘just one more thing’ that you can do before you go home…and it will still be there in the morning.
4. Enjoy it! You are allowed!
I love being a teacher. I love my classes. I love reading books about teaching. I love going to conferences about teaching. I love the science behind teaching. But over the years I have been casually mocked and in some cases insulted by colleagues who say it’s sad or that I need to get a life. I call them mood hoovers because just being around them sucks the life out of a room, and you. You will at some point come across a mood hoover. When that happens remember, you are ALLOWED to enjoy your job and no-one should make you feel bad for that. If you want to colour code your timetable, do it. If you want to run an extra-curricular group, do it! If you want to share a teaching and learning strategy with staff, do it! Because it’s a pretty wonderful job.
A few extra tips:
- Find your person/people. There will always be someone in school that you vibe with.
- Say ‘Hello’ to EVERYONE. Easiest way to make friends.
- Make time for your own passions and hobbies outside of work still.
- Speak to your HOD/SLT if you need to, they are there to look after you too.
- Be brave, try new things in your classroom. They don’t have to always work.
- Always make time for lunch!
And finally, established members of staff can learn a lot from ECTs, don’t be afraid to share your views and make suggestions, your input is just as valuable!
Have an amazing year!
Miss P Teaches. 