I would like to take you back to July 2009. The world was a different place back then – Gordon Brown was Prime Minister as Barack Obama was elected as the first ever African American President. Amongst this time of genuine optimism (for me at least), Donald Trump sent our his first ever words into the Twitterverse as a very early and overlooked warning of the perilous power of social media.
As the world mourned the death of Michael Jackson in the June, Oasis sold out Wembley for three consecutive nights in July, a month also remembered for scandal over MPs expenses. Okay – maybe the world wasn’t all that different.
But there was a sense of optimism in the air. It was palpable. Obama felt like a turning point for the masses, a symbol of a more united, forward-thinking future. And Oasis had reaffirmed to me that being British was still cool and still worth fighting for. I wanted to be part of something, I wanted to make a difference. I wasn’t cut out to be a rockstar so I turned to the next best thing – teaching.
I started my career in education as a part-time attendance officer in a school office and a part-time teaching assistant. I wanted to gain some experience in the sector before making the plunge and it didn’t take me long to see the appeal. Young people are fun. I have always loved the unpredictable, chaotic, random nature of their approach to life and this is what grabbed me straight away. I worked with some incredible teachers at this point who made the job look easy – a youthful arrogance that would hit me like a brick (literally) a year later when taking my first ever lesson on placement at a school on the outskirts of Durham during my PGCE.
It was a science lesson testing the solidity of different types of rock to a year 4 class who I had spent a few weeks with. From memory, the class were calm, well-behaved and engaged with their class teacher so I thought this would be a walk in the park and I was looking forward to the challenge. I hadn’t spent too long planning the lesson – knew I had a bunch of rocks that the kids would test in a variety of ways, had my resources ready and an amazing PowerPoint that I had spent hours perfecting (colours, fonts and pictures galore!) I took great pride in introducing children to the lesson by saying, “let’s rock!” I thought I was part teacher/part standup comedian until that very second. Lesson 1: kids are brutal in their opinion of you. If they think you are cringe they will make it abundantly clear. And they did!
As I’m sure you experienced or enthusiastic educators who are reading this have predicted – the lesson was a disaster. I dared to look up at one point to see rocks flying through the air, broken bits of chalk scattering the floor and my beautifully prepared worksheets lying as discarded paper aeroplanes, reminiscent of a WWII wreckage. I looked towards the class teacher who was observing me for the first time and the look on her face is something I will never forget. Pure shock that a class this lovely had been allowed to descend into this state of chaos within a matter of minutes. She intervened early, cutting my lesson short and regained control of the class purely by the use of a windchime.
Lesson 2: teaching is hard. I never really recovered from that experience on that particular placement. I found it hard to connect with the class, my ego was bruised and the look on that teacher’s face in that moment told me everything I needed to know about what she thought of me. I wish I had a way of contacting her now to let her know what a profound affect that had on me.
I described the lesson earlier as a “disaster.” How often do we use that phrase in education? The OED defines disaster as: ‘an event or fact that has unfortunate consequences.’ The impact this experience had on me was far from unfortunate, it taught me so many lessons. When reflecting on this experience, this springs to mind: Lesson 3: children are fickle. I love this about them. If you have a bad day with a class or an individual, the next day doesn’t have to be the same. I wish I’d have realised this with that very first class instead of letting it tarnish the rest of my time with them.
Despite this ‘rocky’ start – I was hooked. I knew this is what I wanted to do and I was excited for my career to properly begin. Keener than an eight year old with a box full of chalk, after having spent a summer perfecting my first ever set of classroom displays and scouring charity shops for children’s books and cushions – I headed into the world of full-time teaching.
CB's Teaching Diaries 