2 posts tagged “uk”

You could say I have jumped from the pan into the fire. Despite all that I have heard and read up on teaching in English state schools, nothing could have prepared me for the reality of facing mobs of unruly children. It is utterly exhausting.

I wake up at 5 am and get to school just after 7. My first class each day only starts at 8:40 but I need the hour and a half before hand to mentally prepare myself for the noisy, chaotic onslaught that lies ahead.

Picture 25 kids at a time all yelling and carrying on. My job starts by getting them to enter the classroom in somewhat of an orderly fashion. Then comes the far greater challenge of getting them to sit down and actually listen to anything I have to say. This usually takes up the remaining 50 minutes of the lesson.

I like to think that as times goes by I’ll develop a rapport with the students and they will stop giving me such a hard time, but at times I feel it is a lost cause. Some of the teachers I work with face the same problems I do after years at the school. Perhaps the discipline problems are so deeply entrenched that it will require a long period of time and exceptionally dedicated teachers to work itself out the school.

This is unlikely to happen though considering that in my department alone at least half the teachers are openly looking out for other posts and the other half probably doing so in private. It doesn’t surprise me. I am sure that even by English standards this particular school is a tough nut to crack. Only a crummy inner city school could be harder. Then again I heard about a past teacher now working in the kind of inner city school in London where kids carry knives who said that the school I am in is what really toughened her up. It’s worrying to think that she found an inner city school a step up.

Every morning on my way to work I wonder how I’ll make it through to the end of the day with my sanity in tact. Every evening on my way home I wonder how I am going to get myself back to the school the next day. It is torturous to be in a job where you are not only unappreciated but abused left right and centre. Sometimes when I am at my wits end during a lesson I feel like throwing in the towel right there and then. Any other job, even working behind a MacDonald’s counter, seems more appealing than trying to teach kids who wouldn’t even notice if you dropped dead in front of them.

The only way I can keep going at the school is to constantly keep the things I wish to achieve there at the forefront of my mind - gaining qualified teaching status in the UK being the main one. The teaching experience I gain in the process will pad up my resume nicely too.

So in a year from now I will have either made a niche for myself at my current school or I will be at another more congenial school. Either way I’ll definitely be in a better position - I just have to ride out the storm to get there.  

Last week Friday I had an interview for a job teaching Design Technology at a “technology college” in England. It lasted for an hour and a half. The agency who arranged the interview said it was much longer than normal and predicted a favourable outcome. On Monday I was offered the post - which I accepted.

When I told Nancy about it she laughed and asked me how I am going to manage it. “You might as well have accepted a job teaching Maths or Science”. I was quite upset by her response to be honest. I had been expecting her to say, “Well done you!”, and gush a bit. Still, Nancy knows me better than anyone and I wonder if she is right about me biting of more than I can chew with this job.

It is an all-boys school of nearly a thousand students, each one of them taking Design technology. This year I found the 20-odd students I had for art class enough, so how I will manage with 50 times that amount is something I cannot even imagine yet. I will have to deal with it when I am there.

So why did I accept the post? Well to begin with I don’t mind the challenge (albeit it a masochistic one). I will be learning new skills, like how to handle a variety of machines well enough to instruct others how to do so and how to use different CAD programs. I’ll also gain the confidence I currently lack to present myself to a large group of young people and maintain my ground. I’ll learn to be more organised and more efficient.

From a career point of view, Design technology is a good subject to be able to teach because it is a core subject in the UK with many available posts. So once I am okay with teaching it I will be able to cast a far wider net than I can with only Art and Design when looking for a job. In fact, it will probably stand me in good stead when looking for posts in international schools as well. Teaching in international schools is an excellent way to earn good money as a teacher, see the world and experience different cultures, and it is something I would like to do in the future once I have a solid base in the England. Accepting this post is a tactical step towards that goal.

Nonetheless, I am aware that the job might get the better of me after all. Despite all that I stand to gain the fact remains that I prefer teaching Art and Design, I prefer small classes and I prefer teaching girls. But if it really does turn out terribly I will simply leave it at the end of the semester in June when my probation period ends. Even so I will have gained valuable experience and by then I would have found my feet in England, saved some money and be in a better position to go after jobs without the need of an agency.

Time will tell how things turn out.