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.
No comments:
Post a Comment