moving north

I told the Head as soon as I had written confirmation of the position in Edinburgh. Not because I felt I owed it to her, but because of the situation as it was at school what with voluntary redundancies etc. She shook my hand and said, “it sounds like a very interesting position.” Walking away from the office I at once felt relieved, as if I had a safety bubble around me.
Do I feel like I am selling out on Teach First and the mission I’d so passionately bought into? A little, yes. I am not going to be able to directly address the mission as directly as I could. As I run home each evening, I cannot help but feel that I will miss the urban grittiness of South London. However, as soon as i thought about the lessons and conversations i had had with students and staff at the school in Edinburgh, i was energised and enthused by the opportunities, expectations and the value placed on manners: it was cool to achieve (see blog on Berger’s book) and for boys to sing in the choir and study English Literature A level. All of the SLT that had interviewed me had put their children through the school. I couldn’t say the same for the Teach First School.

Another school

When I was offered a position in Edinburgh, I did have to question whether I was being realistic. If my current job was full on, this one would certainly be living on the job!
“You’ll always be able to move up and get these leadership roles when you want them,” my girlfriend said. “You’re busy enough as you are and we need to enjoy being in London with our friends while we’re in our 20s.” I delayed in making the decision and as much as it perhaps shouldn’t have been, my girlfriend was the tie keeping me in London.
Nonetheless, I’ve always had the desire and passion to do a job like this. I was told by many that it would all be too much, that I couldn’t be expected to juggle this role with a girlfriend, friends, family, social life etc etc. But I couldn’t be told: I could do it all, I thought, and I took the job calling the Headmaster on a Saturday afternoon after our joint birthday party, hungover and shattered at the end of a long school week and a long, cold January.

outstanding students

There are two students that stand out for me over my two year’s teaching. These two seemed to have something over their peers: a precocious understanding of how valuable an education would be to them. I suspect it came down to their knowledge of more of the world than just one London borough—towards the end of year 11, this one student had the confidence and respect of her peers to spin yarns about her experiences all over Africa.

My Voice

Another thing that drove me from my students was my voice—with rounded vowels and consonants in more or less the right place—but this wasn’t the voice of my childhood. I picked it up at public school and then even more so at university, along with a penchant for cider! Perhaps this is just a bald case of social climbing—but at the time i thought this was the voice of the intellectual people and if i didn’t have the voice of the intellectual people i could never really be an intellectual. A braver soul would have stood firm, teaching his or her peers a lesson par exemple: not all intellectuals should be of the same class or speak identically. I went the other way, though. This was partly a reflection of my personality—an eagerness to please—and probably some cowardice too!

Day to day

The daily grind of term time made me feel like I was falling into an inexorable tiredness. I couldn’t understand why my best mates from uni—working long hours in the city—could still play rugby on Saturday afternoons, drink all afternoon, night, recover on Sunday and go back to work at 6am on Monday. I came to the realisation that I was not invincible. The morning of my 25th birthday I plucked a grey hair from my head.

Apathy

I never gave up on those that didn’t want to learn but too often it took me away from those that did—that broke my heart. What bothered me so much was that they just did not care: a handful of students just didn’t care whether I helped them or not, whether I marked their essays or not, whether they achieved or not. These students were sometimes rude and aggressive and couldn’t see the point in working ad learning. Though I had faith in them, these were the students that undermined everything I stood for and believed in.

Year 11s

I did promise my year 11s that whatever work they did for me I would mark and turn around within 24 hours since they were my priority. This was in a vain attempt to get them to redraft coursework and do practice exam papers. It didn’t work. So often I wanted to shake them and say, “stop wasting time!” It still feels like a failing on my part that I couldn’t get them to see the need for urgency.
The start of one lesson was so bad I spent half an hour adding up all the late minutes to every lesson and explaining how many extra lessons that gave other students in other schools. They stared on blankly.
I resorted to having mocks every Friday and I would do an hour’s marking on Sunday evening ready for Monday but when I put the exam papers on the desks in front of them the boys would stop for a second during their animated discussions about computer games, glance at the grade, blink, and then return to their conversations, deaf to anything else going on in class.

moving on...

In November one of the VPs asked me about next year and made some murmurs about possibly helping to run the student commission on learning with her. In principle I wanted to stay. However, I didn’t feel as though I had figured out whether I could really do the inner city school thing. I wanted to continue to work with some of my colleagues who were truly inspirational. However, by February, the thought of doing another January seemed like self-flagellation: I couldn’t be the best teacher I could be at the school and the increasing pressure on eeking out C grades at GCSE was getting me down. Pressure from above was growing: a result of pressure to hit the government target of 30% A-C and the English Department, more than any other, was being hit with more and more strategies: data, mocks, data, after school revision classes, data, intensive revision sessions (all paid for by the school while the funding elsewhere was so tight that the school was looking for voluntary redundancies) and more data. I now realise that the increasing pressure may well have always been there but I only became more aware of the academy’s agenda. And I didn’t like it.
I realised that the feeling I’d had back in September when the sun still shone and I felt on top of the school year had long faded away. I started to dream of teaching in a school of well-rounded individuals, classes where I could make 100% of the minutes count.

Despondency

I recall having this conversation with a teacher one year ahead of me and then being on the receiving end of the question this year:
“Does it really get easier?” and the response was the same both times,
“It will never be as bad as the first!”
Indeed, as I started my second year, I had been at the school a good deal longer than a large chunk of the staff. I knew that the school was very territorial and whereas before I was very much coming into their “endz,” I could probably say that I was now “rep’ing the same endz” (sic). Further, two of the most important people to have on side in a school—the secretary and the caretaker—I knew fairly well. September was a dream, reinvigorated by the summer, I would be in school by 7am to return my year 11 work quickly and I would work on my form’s self-esteem blasting them with quote after quote from Mohammed Ali. In early October I was definitely thinking about staying on another year and trying to take on some extra responsibility.

Turning point

All through my first year I’d waited for the moment when it would suddenly get better. I kept promising the next landmark: Christmas, Easter as the watershed with behaviour. It wasn’t until the summer term, though, that I noticed I was much calmer in front of the students and they were calmer as a result. I still tried my best to perform for them, though: telling them stories, telling them about my weekend, playing a role and my favourite classes quickly became malleable. My most tricky classes, however, I still had to bamboozle with clips, powerpoints, music and quick tasks. I never really shook off the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach before lessons with one particular group. It was the unpredictable nature of their mood which I found difficult. At the end of a Monday—when I taught solidly back to back, including 30 minutes of tutoring—I would be visibly frazzled and the bin would be overflowing with packets of junk food the students has surreptitiously being eating.