ABSTRACT
Stories of teachers, especially “war stories” in the media, make for good press. There would be few weeks when there is not a story in the media about education or of teachers. Many of these reports paint a picture of a harried or harassed teacher—overburdened by marking, rude and difficult students and working in conditions that could almost be Dickensian. As a teacher educator these stories catch my eye. An attention-grabbing headline in the Education section of the Independent newspaper titled “The worst six weeks of my life: the diary of a trainee teacher” written by Stephen McCormack, a former BBC news correspondent, certainly grabbed my attention. With such a provocative title I was of course intrigued to read on. My imagination was put into overdrive, what had happened to this student teacher for him to make such a strong statement? Let me present some extracts of what McCormack wrote. 2
Monday morning
The alarm goes off at six and I haul myself out of bed at the start of another week. I try to do half an hour’s work before setting of to school. I am still managing to get a decent night’s sleep most nights, but the cumulative effect of the work load is taking its toll. I constantly feel the dull weight of deep fatigue. I am now six weeks into my second and final teaching practice, and I can honestly say that they have been the hardest six weeks’ work of my life.
When I make this observation to friends outside the profession they say: “Surely journalism was more arduous?” Well, I certainly remember stints of intense pressure as a reporter, covering industrial disputes, the aftermath of bad accidents or terrorist incidents, and wars and revolutions. There were days and nights on end with little sleep in uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous environments at home and abroad.
But these periods would not last too long, and they would usually be punctuated by lulls when the news moved on. That would allow a day or two’s relative relaxation, with a long lunch hour or an afternoon reading the chapter before the next range of activity.
School teaching is different. As least it is for me. The pressure of work is unremitting. For days and weeks on end, lessons have to be prepared and taught, homework and tests marked, miscreant pupils dealt with. All of this I find rewarding, yes, but energy sapping and draining too. The thought of a long lunch or an hour or two reading the chapter is unimaginable. And the key additional factor for me is the weight of social responsibility that teachers bear….
Tuesday morning
Today I’m being observed. Not in the Big Brother sense, although some teachers see Orwellian parallels in much of the inspection system. No, the scrutiny will last just an hour and I will see, and know, the person doing the observing. He’s my tutor from college, and this is one of the three or four official visits he will make during my training year to assess me in the environment that really matters: standing in front of a class.
Although my lessons are prepared, with plans of varying detail, observed lessons are planned just a little bit more thoroughly….
An hour and a half later, and I’m sharing a coffee with my tutor over the debrief. One of his greatest skills is in accentuating the positive. He will always start any post mortem like this with a discussion of what went well, and lavish praise for the good bits. This softens the blow when he comes to the mistakes and wrong turnings, and the criticism is always constructive. Trainee teachers need this approach, because confidence and morale can often be finely balanced.
Everyday I get masses of helpful advice, support and reassurance from the other maths teachers at my school. I believe I could not get by without it. The observation was OK- ish, and I move on to my next class.
Friday
…The bureaucratic load on teachers is well known and no one could complain that we, as trainees, are not being adequately prepared for that part of our future careers. From the very outset of my course, I have been swamped with paper and loaded with form-filling and report-writing exercises. Only tenuously linked to the aim (which can be lost in the fog) of teaching maths to teenagers.
Much of this paper work is driven by the obligation of all trainee teachers to achieve what are called the Standards Necessary to become a Qualified Teacher, set out in a Government circular known affectionately as 4/98.
These standards (68 of them) range from the sensible and constructive to the mind-numbingly obvious, via the familiar verbal contortions of the politically correct.
Thursday 8:30 pm
More than 12 hours after most of the teachers arrived at school, they’re nearly all still here. It’s a Year 10 parents’ evening and my colleagues are sitting behind desks in the school halls talking to parents in fiveminute slots…
What strikes me is how little slack there is in the system. Every teacher seems to be working flat out all of the time; so much so that when for one reason or another a teacher is absent for any prolonged period, the strain is felt immediately…
I’ve seen it happen in one department in this school recently and, were it not for the selfless and voluntary effort by all members of the department and the large amount of time and extra organisation by the faculty head, there would have been numerous times in which pupils were little more than baby-sat. And this is a very popular comprehensive, with a stable and experienced teaching staff in a comfortable teaching area with largely well-motivated pupils and parents. I shudder to think how things are in less fortunate schools, like the one a maths colleague of mine is teaching in, where a third of the staff are leaving at the end of the school year, and where it is not unusual for the police to be called to sort out unruly incidents. All this is creating a tension within the profession and between the unions and the Government. The demand is out for a 35-hour week. I personally don’t think this hour counting, clocking on and off mentality is compatible with the professional approach required of being a teacher. But it is clear to me that the pressure must be relieved somewhere and somehow, probably by reducing the number of class-contact hours of each teacher. That would be a long-term task but without a commitment to it soon, I think that burnout and early retirements will only increase, and retention of new recruits will remain difficult…
