Why did you decide to become a teacher?
“I never really thought about it, really, up until almost the end of university. My mum was a French teacher for many years, so I did sort of grow up in that environment. As soon as I went to do A-level psychology, which is now my subject, I had a fantastic teacher. He was empathetic. He really cared about me as a person and my education. He just knew the ins and outs of the subjects and gave me many opportunities and changed my life, really. And so if I can make that impact on just one student, then I’d be happy.”
What were the challenges during your teacher training?
“I moved away to do my training, which was tough. One of the important things to know when you’re training is to have a support network, having maybe family or friends or even somebody on your course that you can go to in times of need. I think a nice balance between having a teacher friend that you can go to with teacher-related things that you’re struggling with, and then also having a personal element to it. I felt I had to try and implement everything at once. I felt I had to be masterful in my modelling, I felt I had to be excellent in my questioning at all times, and I think that probably too high of an expectation that I had on myself didn’t do me any favours.”
What’s the difference between being a trainee and an ECT?
“The big difference I noticed was the autonomy. You’ve got a lot less time spent with somebody in terms of the training element. What that does mean is it means you can really, truly experiment. I noticed that my willingness to experiment during the training years was a lot less because I would pretty much all the time have somebody at the back of the room. But when I was qualified, I felt that I could freely experiment, and if it didn’t quite go right, it was only me that had to remedy the situation.”
Why did you join the Chartered College of Teaching?
“With my subject psychology, I’ve always been interested in behaviour and learning. I think that real passion for my subject landed it well to then looking at research not just in my subject, but then research in education on how I could perhaps improve my classroom practice. I think we are all experts in our subjects, and I just really do feel that understanding the research about learning in your subjects and the teaching in your subject makes you even more of an expert. It makes you even more effective.”
How have you used your membership?
“I mainly used it originally for the Impact journals. It’s very easy to read. It’s bite-sized CPD. Originally I focused on areas in my context – I wanted to learn more about post-16 education. Eventually, I signed up for the Certificate of Educational Inquiry. That gave me an opportunity to not just engage in research, doing a literature review, but also testing and trying something in the classroom that I wouldn’t have thought about trying. I wanted to listen to and hear from like-minded individuals who were passionate about their subjects, but also to get some perspective from other contexts, other schools.”
What advice would you give to current trainee teachers?
“The biggest piece of advice I could give is to-do lists. I’ve seen so many trainee teachers struggle with the organisation side of things. Just making sure even if they’re small things, writing them down. Getting yourself online in groups and Facebook groups, Twitter, things like that in terms of resources, because training can be very difficult in terms of getting strong resources for your lessons. Don’t feel like it needs to be the perfect lesson. Despite putting in all that effort and work, it will take time. In the same way we are patient with our students, we should be patient with ourselves.”
