Earlier this year, Matthew Godfrey, 29, explained why he had decided to
give up his business career to train to be a teacher. Later, he described his
experiences as a trainee at two contrasting London schools. Now he has embarked
on his new career
This article appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 7 October 2000
LAST month, newly qualified and
somewhat apprehensive, I arrived at my first teaching post, ready for action. I
knew the school - an "improving" inner-city comprehensive - because I
had completed half my training there last year. "Back for more of the
same, then?" asked a new colleague as a stream of boisterous teenagers
stormed by.
Despite its location in
fashionable Fulham, south-west London, Hurlingham and Chelsea School has a
classic inner-city profile: more than half of its pupils are entitled to free
school meals, nearly half are from ethnic minority backgrounds, and nearly a
third have some kind of special educational need. Indeed, there are so many
selective and independent schools in the area that we receive a
disproportionate share of pupils from low-income families.
Having been a trainee English
teacher at the school, I knew just how badly behaved the pupils could be -
fights and foul language in class are commonplace - but my experience had not
been sufficiently bad to deter me from returning. In fact, I had found the
pupils very engaging, despite their unruliness, and the staff had been hard
working and supportive.
My new list of duties looked
daunting: teaching five classes from year groups spanning 11 to 16, each with
30 pupils; being pastoral tutor to another form of pupils, all of whom are new
to secondary school; running an after-school club, and much more.
I was determined not to become a
fire-fighter: as a trainee, I had, on occasion, experienced the horror of
taking a class without adequate preparation, and knew that this could be the
route to stress and disillusionment. I knew that, given an inch, these pupils
would take a mile: tight planning is a must if 30 teenagers of mixed ability
are to be occupied - never mind occupied constructively - for a whole hour.
Before
training as a teacher, I had spent more than six years in business
management,
much of it seeking efficient solutions to problems. I now had a very
different professional setting but a fundamentally similar kind of challenge:
how
could I organise my time to optimise pupil progress and minimise
my stress levels?
I pondered this over the summer,
and two issues struck me as particularly important. First, how could I engender
a sense of growing, regular achievement in my classes? I knew that success
could breed success, and wanted to capitalise on this as effectively as
possible.
Second, what would be the smartest
way for me to work? For example, when marking, is it really sensible to spend
hours writing virtually identical comments in 30 different exercise books?
Similarly, how could I avoid explaining something to an entire class that was
already understood by a third of the pupils?
Of course, concerns about
discipline underpinned all this, but my experience was that disruption was a
sign of pupils' lack of confidence in tackling new material, and also of poor
class management on my part.
I set up various systems in my new
classroom, designed to give purpose and direction to the pupils' work, to
highlight achievement, make the pupils feel responsible for their efforts, and
to streamline and enhance my work. For example: wall displays that showed
pupils' progress; an easily manageable reward system for homework, setting
pupils specific targets that I could monitor; a simplified marking system to
limit the time spent marking each book to around three minutes.
Not all of this would be
appropriate in other types of school. But at Hurlingham and Chelsea, where
literacy skills can be very poor, a more structured approach seemed suitable.
As I braced myself to meet my new pupils - all 180 of them - I just hoped they
would respond to my efforts.
Now, several weeks into my first
term, I can report a mixed bag of experiences. So far, the positive experiences
have far outweighed the negative, and I have enjoyed almost all my classes. In
particular, the pupils aged 11 to 14 are great fun to teach, and they have, by
and large, been producing good work. I cannot pretend to have them in rapt
silence all the time, but there have been no major incidents of bad discipline.
There have, perhaps inevitably,
been low points. Twice, I have had to restrain angry children to prevent
clashes, and settling my very lively Year 10 class (15-year-olds) is proving to
be a challenge. Persistent "cussing" between pupils is a problem, but
as yet, no one has insulted me directly.
In terms of streamlining my
workload, I have a long way to go: I am keeping on top of things, but only by
working long hours. My policy of not bringing work home has not yet been broken
- to my wife's relief.
The school is definitely
improving: the proportion of pupils gaining five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C
has trebled over the past four years - though it remains low at 26 per cent -
and the school has doubled in size during that period.
The general atmosphere is
positive, and that is how I feel at the start of my new career.
Matthew Godfrey will be reporting from time to time on
how his career develops.
Published in The Daily Telegraph on 7 October 2000
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