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“Were my teachers doing their jobs properly?” CLASSROOM VOICES Looking to the teachers of your past for career inspiration isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can only take you so far, says MarkWilson … D uring your ITT, one piece of advice you’ll have probably been given was to try and ‘be like the teacher you remember best from your childhood.’ The problem with this advice, however, is that it’s the educational equivalent of an old wives’ tale; memorable, honest in its way, but often outdated. Upon starting my own Schools Direct training as a career-changer, it had been 21 years since I’d last stepped inside a secondary school classroom. I could recall many excellent educators across the eight schools I’d attended before the age of 17, but with all that had happened since, these figures had become blurred and indistinct, and my classroom memo- ries much hazier. At best, I had a vague sense of what separated good teachers from the bad; those who came across as caring, intelligent and supportive, versus those who were hapless, tedious or con- stantly irate. Even those of you who went straight from university into on-the-job training or a PGCE will have spent at least six years well outside of any secondary schools. How clearly can you remember what you were doing six years ago? ‘The ideal teacher’ There is some benefit to formulating a template of ‘the ideal teacher’. Learning from an inspiring example in your own life can be useful when creating your own recipe for outstanding pedagogy. As your practice evolves, calling to mind what you admired about an individual headteacher or form tutor will give you an end goal towards which you can navigate, like the steps and photographs in a recipe book. My issues with this approach stem from the inevitability of change, and the inherent subjectivity of personal experience. In those six (or more) years, how might the education sector have changed? New technologies – visualisers and online homework platforms, say – will have become commonplace. Attitudes will have changed; witness the shift towards evidence-based research and the growing influence of TeachMeets and #EduTwitter. Indeed, if nothing had changed at all, we’d rightly worry that the profession wasn’t adapting to the changing academic needs and demographic makeup of our pupils. Our own personal experience plays an important part in shaping the kind of teachers we become, but it’s vital that we also examine this critically. After all, how do I know whether my former teachers were actually doing their jobs properly? In Y10, my class and I were taught entirely the wrong IT syllabus; come exam time, there were audible gasps when we turned the paper over, swiftly followed by tears. Apples and oranges At the other end of the scale, we can all remember teachers capable of silencing a class with a single word or gesture, but they’ll have worked hard to get there. Those memories will be of an educator who was likely at the peak of their powers – not someone quietly and diligently striving to become the best version of themselves. Who they were then isn’t comparable to who you are now. The best advice I’ve received in this area is to not just look back nostalgically on those rose-tinted memories, but to pay attention to what’s happening in classrooms right now, and combine the two to conceive of an effective teacher and all that entails. To do this will require choosing certain traits from previous teachers – or colleagues – based on your past observations or interactions, whether they be that gruff, impatient, old Latin master you remember from college’s dusty library or that progressive, dynamic, lecturer who did so much to make you a more proactive and conscientious student. You can then use this ‘blueprint for an effective teacher’ and your accumulated experiences to devise a map charting the route to developing your own teacher identity – one hopefully built on much firmer foundations than the subjective reminiscences of your misremembered ‘golden years’… ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mark Wilson is an English teacher and Y7 form tutor at Riddlesdown Collegiate 25 O P I N I O N teachwire.net/secondary