Class Dojo

I have been meaning to write about Class Dojo, the online behaviour management software, for a while, but really wanted to make sure that I had the substance that makes (at least) mildly interesting reading.  When I was last prepared to write @dominic_mcg had pipped me to the post, so if you are simply curious about how it works, here is his blog post on Class Dojo.   For now, I’m just going to explain the effect it has had one one of my worse behaved classes and how it could be put to other ‘behavioural’ uses in the classroom.

NQT Take 2

Being on supply and doing little bits here and there was definitely a valuable experience and taught me many things that I wouldn’t have learned had I been in just one school…. However I’m pleased to announce that I’m going back to school full time, and better still, it’s the same school in which I did the first term of my NQT, hooray!

I’m taking different classes, in a different classroom and starting again, but I’m also not.  I’ve taught all but two of the classes before, I’m back in the same department and I know who everyone is and where everything is.  It’s like Take 2, or rather Take 1b.  I’m going in a lot more prepared, knowing all the procedures and policies, and have a better idea of what I need to be working on towards my standards.  I finally got around to putting together a file last week, it really had been put off for far too long!  It’s really strange, it feels like a fresh start, but at the same time, it feels like an old pair of slippers?!

Goals for Take 2:

• Try at least 3 new ideas every week, even if they are only quick, such as those being blogged about on the MFL Ideas Factory
• Use more ICT – I teach one class a week in an IT suite this time around, must try something fun!
• Use more Target Language
• Work on the standards
• Observe more in NQT time
• Stay on top of marking
• Be smarter with my time – I’m sure a better work-life balance is achievable!

It’s good to be back!

Decisions, decisions…

Following the lovely MrsNLC’s bombshell blog, I have been inspired to blog about my own plans for September.

Almost three years ago I moved to London and began working as a Teaching Assistant. I never planned to end up in London, but it just kind of happened. I never planned on staying forever, and even last year I gave serious consideration to moving out of the big smoke. But I didn’t. Somehow I didn’t quite feel done with this city yet, and so I focused my job hunt on North London and got myself a job.

My job hunt was far from a straightforward one. I ended up with a grand total of seven interviews before I took the post I hold currently. I was quite a picky job hunter and turned down a job and withdrew from another interview, before finally settling on this one. This was a job I had very much intended on staying in for at least the next three years or so. In a lot of respects I think I made a good decision – I love most of the boys I teach, my department are lovely and I have made some really wonderful friends. However, there have also been things about this school I have not enjoyed so much. I really wanted my own classroom and have been quite disappointed (and I’ve found it extremely demanding on my non-existent organisational skills!) to be teaching in seven different classrooms. There have also been instances where I have asked for help with situations and that help has not been provided. I don’t want to go into detail about what those situations were, but they were enough to make me reconsider my initial plan to remain at this school in September.

Meanwhile, at the NQT bloggers meet-up in August, I met a chap. A very lovely chap. A chap I was surprisingly compatible with. A chap who, typically, lived two-hundred miles away. However, I have never been the most sensible of people, and so we decided that a long distance relationship during an NQT year didn’t seem so silly. And so my NQT year has been characterised by bi-weekly trips up North, which has served as a bit of a reminder as to why I never planned on living in London in the first place.

It became clear a few weeks ago that this lovely blogger and I didn’t want to continue only spending two sevenths of our week together, and so we began to look to the future. Our initial plan was that he would move to London. I would stay where I was and he’d hunt for a job in our country’s capital. On paper it made sense – we both knew people down here, there’s a decent public transport network, there are lots of schools so job hunting would be easier.

But, one night after a hellish tube journey from a rammed Kings Cross to my house, which cost us £3.10 for the priviledge of being pressed against numerous sweaty bodies belonging to perfect strangers, we looked at each other and said “do we really want to live in London?” And at that moment, we realised that there is another city that is far more perfect for us, and that city is… Liverpool!

And so, all being well, I will be completing my NQT year in London and continuing my teaching career in the North West. There will be lots of people I will miss, and lots of things about London schools that I will be sad to leave, but I think the things I have learned from my time in London schools will serve me well in the future. Pretty exciting stuff, I think, and the best bit is that it all started because of a blog!

Decision Time

“So, why do you want to be a teacher?”

It’s that question. It’s asked in interviews. It’s the thing that underpins one of the key parts of your life. Theoretically, it should be easy to answer. Yes, it will almost always contain a cliché about children and the future, but ultimately it should be an honest reflection on the career choice. And hopefully, it will have been a positive decision.

Looking back, I made the decision to be a teacher for all the wrong reasons at a point in my life when I probably should have been learning to go with the flow and not deciding something that would alter the rest of my life. There’s no need for the details. Let’s just say, I wasn’t in any state to make a career choice back at the time.

Hindsight is a really wonderful thing.

The answer to that initial question? “I don’t.”

Yes, you read that correctly. After a year of training and half a year of having my own class, I have decided I don’t want to be a teacher.

Whilst I can honestly say it’s a decision I’ve spent a long time agonising over, I can also say that in the end it was an easy decision. I simply don’t enjoy teaching.

I loved my PGCE. However, looking back, I enjoyed the academic aspects of the course far more than the placements. I think that should have been my first clue that this wasn’t the career for me. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve not been enjoying myself this year. I’m constantly stressed, close to tears, I’ve lost a lot of weight, and despite being told I have a lot of potential, I don’t see myself ever being a truly inspirational and outstanding teacher.

One of the things I hate the most about the job is the sheer quantity of work. If I wanted to, I could work all day every day, and still have more things I could do, or things I could do better. As it is, I’m at school for close to 10 hours each day, where I choose to work through my lunch break to try to get more done. It gets to the end of each exhausting day, and I know that there’s things I really should be doing at home. On a good day, I will do it. Increasingly, I simply don’t have the energy, which means I end up feeling guilty and more stressed about the work I’ve yet to do. That’s not even considering the weekends.

On top of this, I’m finding that the things I end up prioritising are not the things that are most beneficial for the children, but the things that are most important to my management. This is something else I end up feeling guilty about.

If these were my only complaints about the job, I think I could cope. I got into the profession knowing I would have to work hard, and I have no issue with hard work. However, it didn’t take too long for me to realise that I don’t actually enjoy the teaching part of the job either. I don’t enjoy standing in front of a class full of children. I don’t feel that “buzz” other people talk about. I don’t notice that look in their eye when they suddenly understand something. In fact, as a whole class the children really irritate me. I mean, I like them all individually. They’re really wonderful kids. But put them all in the same room as me for 5 hours a day and I start to gradually lose my sanity.

People have suggested I try a different school before I give up teaching altogether, but I just don’t think that would be fair on the children. If I don’t enjoy teaching them, they’re likely to know – even if I act to the very best of my ability. And as much as I don’t like the job, I respect the children enough to know they deserve more than that. They deserve the very best teacher available; they deserve someone who wakes up each morning excited by the day ahead of them and walks into school with a smile.

And so, this week, I have handed in my letter of resignation.

It was an easy decision really, and one I’m really glad to have made.

mrsnlc

Following Children’s Interests in Early Years

I haven’t done a blog post for ages because firstly, I have been so very busy and secondly, I have not really had anything great to blog about. However, in the final week of the last half-term, I went on an amazing course at Early Excellence in Huddersfield. Now if you work in Early Years I’m sure you will have heard of this place and I hope you have been there. It’s a lovely place for courses specialising in Early Years and they have rooms set out with provision areas for inspiration, a shop full of lovely resources (but are rather pricey) and a yummy café. The course I attended was all about developing learning through a child initiated approach.

 

The course was led by Anna Ephgrave, an EYFS leader and Ruth Moore, Early Years Manager at Enfield’s School Improvement Service. It was based on the way Anna runs her Early Years unit without any forward planning or focus activities. The adults are free to interact with the children in their play and move their learning on appropriately. This spontaneous way of working sounded great and was exactly what we were taught at university but you rarely see it in practice. At university they were always going on about how children learn best when they are doing something they are interested in, young children are curious, children should be learning independently, ‘hands on’ learning… and the list goes on. Yet when we step into an average Early Years classroom we have children coming to sit on the carpet for a 10 minute input on something most of the class might be interested in and then we follow this up with a small group activity and we try to get through as many groups as possible before lunch time.

 

Anna and Ruth showed how things can be different; you can follow children’s interests and still get results. I feel awful interrupting a child’s play to ask them to come and do a focus activity with me and I hear this voice at the back of my head saying ‘why are you stopping them from learning independently? You could play with them and scaffold their learning’. I don’t always have the time to play and scaffold because I’m doing focus activities or observing. This course definitely gave some food for thought and I would like to aim to adapt my practice to follow children’s interests and spend more time playing and interacting. I got a copy of Anna’s book on this course which I would thoroughly recommend if you would like to follow children’s interests.

Halfway there (living on a prayer?)

Well, like the rest of you guys I am also just beyond halfway now through the NQT year and feel like I am facing different challenges now to what I was at the start of the year.  I probably had the same challenges but I just never saw them as I was likely blinded by the foremost challenges.

A post about TalkNQT.co.uk

 

Even though you interact with upwards of 200 people a day, are constantly in meetings and have millions more people to talk to, it’s surprising how lonely being a new teacher can be.

It’s hard. Your timetable has increased from 50% to around 80% in the blink of eye, and that person at the back of the classroom judging you has gone along with that safety net. These are your students now, you are solely responsible for their education. You could be the difference between them donating millions to homeless charities or needing someone to give them money in the street. You’re surrounded by people who have so much to say every other thing that comes out of their mouth is an acronym… APP, APC, PLD, PLTS… OMG!

What if you don’t understand these phrases? Can you ask someone what they mean? Who can you ask? Is it too stupid a question to ask? Will it tarnish my reputation? Will they laugh at me in front of the staff room? Will they realise I’m incompetent and cut my contract?

At the end of January, half way through my first year, I wanted to quit. I remember hoping to be involved in a 42 car pile up just so I didn’t have to go into school. I talked to my mentor about it, obviously leaving out the part about the pile up. Although he was very supportive, I still didn’t feel happy. Then I spoke to one of my friends who was on my PGCE course. Turns out he went through the same time a couple of weeks beforehand. I can’t fully remember what we said, but I do know I felt a lot better about school and life afterwards. After speaking to a few other teachers I knew, I discovered that there are a lot of schools where there is only one PGCE, NQT, GTP etc. That’s when the idea ofTalkNQT.co.uk was born.

My hope is that it will be become a community  where new teachers can log on to ask questions, give support and share ideas, resources and successes with other new teachers. We may be at different stages in our lives, teaching different subjects and ages,  and be at different schools, but we’re all going through this journey of highs and lows together.

Whether you’d like to ask a question, get support, share ideas and resources, or recount a success story, TalkNQT.co.uk is the place for you!

A brilliant article by Alan Newland

“If you are a new teacher, you’ll be making lots (and lots) of mistakes. Don’t worry about it. You’ll not only survive them, you’ll learn from them and if you reflect on them honestly, you’ll be a better teacher for them too.

Most mistakes will be small and inconsequential – like losing a child’s homework or confusing the names of twins. The kids won’t care, so neither should you. “Learn from your mistakes” should be a maxim for teachers and children alike.

Occasionally though, you’ll make a bad mistake and wonder why you ever wanted to teach in the first place, have a sleepless night about it and think that your fledgling teaching career lies in tatters on the classroom floor.

Don’t.

Mistakes are a natural part of learning. If you never make mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough or taking necessary risks to become the teacher you deserve to be.

There are very few mistakes you can’t recover from. Even bad ones.

Here’s my evidence…”

(Click here for the link to the full article)

 

 

 

A very important lesson.

I’ve never been very good at asking for help. Asking for help is scary. It means you have to admit that things aren’t perfect and you aren’t doing everything right, and I like to be good at things.

Unfortunately, as an NQT you aren’t going to be perfect; you are going to make mistakes; and you are going to need help. Equally as unfortunate is the fact that people who work in schools are busy, and they don’t necessarily notice that you’re struggling with things if you continually put on a brave face, which it seems I’m rather good at. A couple of weeks ago it all came to a head with both my Year 9 classes and I was forced to do the very thing I was terrified of doing: admit that I couldn’t do it alone.

It was scary and it was horrible, and I am ashamed to admit that I did pretend to go and look for an exercise book in a cupboard in a classroom so I could hide the fact that I was crying. However, I’ve found that asking for help can be strangely liberating. People don’t look at you as a failure, and some people even go above and beyond the call of duty to help you out.

My favourite example of this actually reminds me why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place. When I was 13 my Year 9 class was taken over by a new teacher. I remembered him being very tall and wearing a red jacket. I was a bit scared of him because I was really rather shy and didn’t have much confidence. However, he spent time and energy making sure I knew that I was good at English, and my ideas were worth sharing, and after a while I even became comfortable enough to put my hand up and answer questions.

Cut to seven years after I did my GCSEs and I myself am now an English teacher, teaching one of the very same poems he taught me when I was 15. Shortly after I taught this poem, I had a lesson with a difficult Y9 class. I put two and two together and decided to email my old English teacher, just on the off-chance he might be able to offer a kindly word or two. I didn’t expect much more than a couple of sentences saying “lovely to hear from you. Hang on in there” when I hit send. Within two hours he’d replied to say how sorry he was I was having a hard time, how happy he was I’d become an English teacher, and that he’d be in touch with some advice as soon as he’d had a good think about what he thought would be best. The next day he’d emailed to tell me he’d spoken to the head of lower school at his own school and that she’d be emailing me with some suggestions shortly. He then proceeded to offer to help me with my planning for those classes to see if he could help in that way, which when you consider that he’s got three young children and is the Head of Department, is pretty damn generous!

This tale has reminded me precisely what kind of teacher I want to be: one that cares and will go above and beyond, even when times are tough. It has also taught me the most valuable piece of advice so far this year: ask for help, because nobody knows you need it if you don’t speak up.

Assessment it’s all about assessment

This half term is absolutely flying by and it has been an incredibly busy one! I have felt that the shine of a new profession has worn off slightly and now I am well and truly into the breach.

I was shocked to discover that this new term brought with it the dreaded book scrutiny in which each subject coordinator absconded with all my planning and a top, middle and bottom example of work for their subject. I was well and truly under the microscope and I wasn’t too keen! Having emerged relatively unscathed by this procedure (as of course I expected some areas for improvement) I caught my breath only to discover that assessments were upon me!

When I found out that my little mites had to complete assessment booklets for both English and Maths I was quite shocked; they’re only 5 and 6 years old, I felt like an evil tyrant! I also felt very apprehensive, what if I’d finally come unstuck, what if these tests reveal that I have in fact taught these children nothing, what if all the prancing around I had done had no merit whatsoever?! It was a time of great anxiety and felt that my promise as a teacher was in the hands of a sterile, insipidly green booklet.

Thankfully my wonderful children did fabulously and really shone, which as their teacher felt pretty damn good. There were moments when I wanted to scream ‘you know that, why have you done that?’ but these were tempered with moments of absolute pride. It was really wonderful to have something tangible to show how much each child had progressed and it has given me some reassurance that I’m doing alright at this teaching lark…plus something to actually say at the next parent’s evening!

@CGIBecca