Teaching is a Journey

Coming out of university I had in my CV what I believed to be comments that spoke very highly of me as a student teacher.  What I of course did not realise was the huge difference between being a student teacher and being a full time classroom teacher in charge of your own classroom.  I had heard it all before from the teachers in my family - give yourself space to breathe, you can't do everything at once, everybody makes mistakes... and every time that I heard it from someone new I got frustrated.  I didn't want to be a beginning teacher that felt like I was drowning and knew nothing - that may or may not however have been the exact impression that I gave off to the principal of my school in the first term.  I would take everything on, and crumble inside - but remind management many, many times that I am brand new at this - it was in a way my excuse for not having everything perfect.  What I didn't realise was that it was perfect at that stage to be a brilliantly imperfect teacher - and through not knowing things, making my own mistakes and learning from the mistakes of others was exactly what I was supposed to be doing - that was the perfect role for me at the time.  I had left university as a teacher, and by mid year of my first year of teaching I had finally reaccepted my position as a learner.  In line with this, I find the following saying very true - both for myself as a new teacher and for teachers who have been in their position for many years and may not necessarily want to learn new things.

Over the following two terms, I relished my role as a learner - and soaked up as much as I could - whilst still learning the ins and outs of the school that I was working at.  This year is where I believe that the change has been for me however.  I have an outstanding tutor teacher who has complete faith in my abilities - both to teach successfully and to fail at teaching (and learn from it).  Having a tutor teacher who has seen me succeed well, and seen me fail (not so well) has led to conversations that are very growth minded.  He knows that I want to learn and grow and that I see myself as a learner - and so he has led from alongside me and provided direction by jumping on the learning journey with me. Working underneath this person has moved my love of teaching students to a passion for developing myself as a teacher continually.  He has helped me set goals, visit other schools, observed me, helped me find professional readings that challenge me - and most importantly allowed me to play around with my own style of teaching.  In my class I have been experimenting with POGIL (as referred to in previous posts). This has been one of the things that I have done as my Teaching as Inquiry this year - and I have fallen in love with it.  Hence the next picture.

However, I am extremely grateful that I learnt the importance of viewing myself as a learner early on in my first year of teaching.  The POGIL style of teaching was slightly chaotic at first and left my team leader making comments about the noise level in the room - and wondering if the students could concentrate at that noise level.  However, as the weeks have gone by and I have adapted the philosophy behind POGIL to my classroom everything has settled down.  The children love their new style of learning and so do I.  They are inquisitive, they have urgency for their work - and they truly are learning because they want to - and for no reason except for that.  They help to analyse their own data and determine what they will be learning and they love it.  The same team leader came into my room last week and commented on how well the kids were working and the programme that they were doing.  As a result of sticking with this, my whole team is now experimenting with POGIL styled mathematics tasks - adapted to the teachers individual journeys with POGIL.

This next picture stuck out to me because with POGIL this is true - my children work so well together that I know that the same depth and breadth of discussion could be happening regardless of whether or not I am in the classroom and working with their group.  I have become far more of a facilitator and guide than someone who issues them with instructions etc.

I feel extremely honoured to work with such a great team at my school - and to have the support of other teachers.  As well as my TT and my team leader I have had a small number of other teachers come and ask if they can observe how POGIL works also.  My students are very keen to share their hard work and I am excited to have these other teachers in my classroom also.  These teachers have no experience of POGIL and so it will be a learning curve for them just as much as it is from me and I am extremely interested to see the feedback that they have given me (My tutor teacher and team leader both have researched POGIL before coming to view it in my classroom).

My final thought for the night is the same thing that hit me half way through last year - the best teachers truly are the best learners - teaching is a journey where we help and support each other, through observations, through sharing readings and resources, through being able to talk things through, and sometimes by having a night off together that has absolutely nothing to do with teaching.  I aim to be a brilliant teacher who can cater successfully to the individual needs of every student in my class - and to do that I need to be a pretty switched on learner.  I am looking forward to continuing on with my teaching journey as a learner - and learning from everyone and everything around me.