As readers of this blog will know, I’m a passionate advocate for developing teaching techniques with precision; I believe in strong routines and clear boundaries for assertive behaviour management; I’m committed to the idea of setting high expectations of students, making them work really hard and being generally extremely demanding! I also think strong collective action across a team and a school is way more powerful for raising standards than each teacher going off doing their own thing.

But with all that said, none of it goes against another deep conviction of mine which is that, in order to sustain a career in teaching, you need to enjoy it, own it and do the things you want to do. Otherwise you just won’t stick at it which is no good to anyone.

I get sniped at as an over-the-hill consultant that’s no longer teaching in classrooms just like anyone else in my position but I’m proud of spending 30 years working in six different schools. God, I’ve taught more lessons than many of those eye-rollers! I spent many many years with totally maxed out timetables, and I always taught my own classes including examination classes even as a Headteacher. I feel I lived this philosophy the whole time. I had fun my lessons and tried hard to make the learning process as enjoyable as possible for my students. There’s enough drudgery in the world to drown us all without that seeping into the special worlds we create in our classrooms.

I would give this advice to anyone starting out in teaching or perhaps something starting to feel a bit jaded. You need to make teaching the job you want it to be. Be yourself, express yourself and have fun with it! Everyone is different and will find different ways in which that takes shape. Here’s a short list of my things:

Relationships and Personality

Obviously you can’t teach for long if you don’t fundamentally enjoy being amongst young people or children of the age you teach! I used to love that aspect and enjoyed the feeling of having a strong rapport with individuals and whole classes. What I found was that this emerged through them respecting me as a teacher who took them seriously. I’m always super serious and super enthusiastic about achievement, excellence and the ideas in the curriculum. I loved creating that sense of ‘if you want to love science and do really well, you came to the right place because we are going to smash it!’. For some, I may have been too big a personality- loud and a bit ultra at times! – but I was being me and that wasn’t going to change. You’ve got to be who are you are – and also enjoy who the students are!

Curriculum Choices

I loved teaching science and maths because I actually find them incredibly interesting and I know how to sequence the curriculum, where to dwell a while and where to zip along; I know the stories, the hinterland, the cool demos and practicals and make it all a bit more exciting. I learned all this by making mistakes and moving on. I had my bag of tricks; my favourite things; the lessons I’d look forward to. You can’t get a much better feeling as a teacher than being the one who gets to pass the baton of knowledge on say, Pythagoras, evolution, atoms, photosynthesis, special relativity, differentiation and integration from first principles, and quarks. These are moments of pure joy… let me bring you all into this world of knowledge that will blow your mind! I modelled being the ultra physics geek with maximum commitment!

I think it’s true that our UK curriculum is over-stuffed but even here, there are so many choices you can make because, by making them, you yourself are inspired, motivated, reminded of the joy of learning your subject. You are not restricted to the degree that you can’t at some point just teach the thing you want to teach just because you want to! I did that all the time – and of course it was woven into the wider curriculum framework but there are always choices! The poem, the story, the person, the example, the scenario, the backstory, the method – choices aplenty! Sometimes you just have to go right off piste and do a special lesson. Why? Because you, the teacher, will be fired up and that is really important for everyone.

Student Agency

A big part of my teaching, was developing opportunities for students to lead learning. I picked this up in my first ever job: A level students with text books could learn to make notes at home and then lessons were free for doing questions, problems, practicals and demos.. I never had to write notes on the board or make resources. The students did all that – because we trained them how to! At KEGS I developed the concept of co-construction with students leading lessons, running demos and practicals and more generally being very deeply involved in tracking our progress through the syllabus. Year 7s could do it too – and I loved how much excellent work you could get if you took the lid off and invited students to present their knowledge in any way they wanted – videos, storyboards, websites, booklets they made – alongside the routines of tests etc. My teacher cliché homework mantra was: you’re not doing it for me; you’re doing it for yourself. So make it excellent and you will feel good about yourself.

I learned that the biggest restriction of student agency is often teachers’ lack of confidence that it can work – so you have a vicious circle of teacher doubt leading to a lack of student agency. I reversed that: took some risks, set super high expectations, demanding excellence and the need to meet deadlines and students rose to it time and time again. They loved it; I loved it. We had fun and learned tons and they aced their exams! What’s not to like!?

A sense of mission; bringing the energy!

Finally, the thing that kept me going for so long in teaching was that sense that it matters; a true belief in wanting students to excel that created a kind of driven energy around our learning process. For some teachers, their idea of being themselves might be a bit more chilled out, taking things more slowly. Not for me – I was always on a mission and that’s what I enjoyed. That didn’t mean rushing – but it meant that we needed to do the things we said we’d do – always always. Homework, experiments, presentations – and all the hours of classwork – were important and needed to be done and done well. That sense of real drive was part of teaching for me. We’re not here to muck about and drag ourselves through a murky, drab curriculum – we’re here to really think hard, to listen to each other, share ideas, practise hard and wrestle with the hard stuff.

So – those are my things. You will have your own. Don’t let anyone knock them out of you. Make teaching the job you want it to be. Teach great lessons – harness all the contemporary wisdom around the science learning; work with colleagues to solve the tricky problems; blend the techniques with your curriculum knowledge and passion your sense of what really matters and do the things you feel will work the best. If you believe the outcomes from your approach will be excellent, they probably will be and once you know your classes, you’ll be more of an expert than anyone else. Trust yourself. Do your thing. And above all, be yourself. Teaching is awesome – make it yours!