Long Hours

Finding the time to write this has been quite difficult. I'm at that point in teaching placement where I had to have a ton of work done to submit online by 5pm today, which meant any work I might have done in the staffroom was all for that, and not specifically for tomorrow's lessons.

The problem? Motivating myself to work after a long day in the school is difficult, especially when tired, and especially when I know the work I do will not be appreciated by the pupils. They are beginning to realise, however, that I'm a student teacher, with a couple of shocked faces at the revelation of the amount of work I have to do for each lesson.

Still, these long hours are killing me slowly, whether the students notice I'm doing a lot of work in advance for them or not.

I'd love a chance to sit down and not have to worry about the next lesson I'm going to teach. While I'm in the school, I will be open to inspection at pretty much any time, so every lesson is met with a bag of nerves bashing about the place. And two bags with ridiculous folders in them, too, with all my lesson plans and resources.

Oh yeah...

I know these long hours are part and process of becoming a teacher. That doesn't mean I have to like them. The meticulous lesson planning, the resource gathering, the staying up late to do it all and waking up early to get to the school in time to teach it all is draining me quickly.

If last year, and the year before that, are anything to go by, I'll be sick by the end of the final week, when the last inspection is done and the last class taught and my body thinks it's time to settle down and relax and BAM - a kick in the immune system, because I'm not under high pressure to not get sick anymore.

Seriously, happened last year when the placement was less stressful.

This is my big worry about placement, actually, that I might get sick before its over. I know there's only so much stress and lack of sleep I can take before it starts to come through. There's no denying that this is a tough job, and the inspections don't help.

If people thought the emphasis placed on a single exam in the Leaving Cert was bad, then they have no idea. A single forty minute lesson could decide my whole future, theoretically, and even if I did everything right things could still go wrong, because I can't control what every single pupil decides to do at any given moment in the lesson. They're not robots, they can't be programmed, and they can't be expected to sit there in silence as the Dream Team of students to teach while the examiner is present. No class can achieve that, though some really do try.

The point is, I'm tired. I'm going to get less than seven hour's sleep, and writing this had nothing to do with that, because I had resources printing while I was writing.

It's a thankless job, with no salary at the end of the placement, and I'm fairly sure that it makes teaching look like the worst job in the world, even though I love being in the classroom. It's just the extra hours up until midnight and the lesson plans and resources required that I don't like. Mainly because (and I can't say this enough) I'm tired as heck.

On the bright side, I'm managing to write something every day this year regardless. And maybe, maybe, I'll get to get ahead of myself tomorrow. That'd be something.

Subverted the Norm

My students described me in two ways, between talking out of turn, working and asking me questions about my personal life (name, college, do I work in X, do I hate them). I'm not sure I agree with their assessment in either case, but here we go. Apparently I am (a) cool and (b) scary. Sorry, what?

What?!

Urban Dictionary (a perfectly citable source for definitions) describes "cool" as: "The best way to say something is neat-o, awesome, or swell." However, "cool" is a term that is relative to the observer. (Which is why, when asked if I am cool - happened once - I respond with "No.") My classes consisted of twelve and thirteen year olds. They did a number of things, like play sports, not-read and play X-Box.

Somehow, I don't see how they then came to the conclusion that I am "cool". By their standards, I would need to:

(a) Play sport. Let's just be clear, here: the most physical activity I got in my three weeks in that school was walking to and from the bus stop and to the college. Okay, this amounted to several kilometres a day with what might have been heavy bags in each hand on some days (copies... gotta love 'em!), but I wouldn't call that sport. They even asked what team I supported, and were disappointed when I said I don't. I wasn't going to lie to make them like me. I don't like sports. I don't think people who play sports are "cool". (Correction: I don't think playing sports defines someone as being "cool" - I might think someone is "cool" who also happens to play sports, but the two are as related as myself and the president of Uganda.)

(b) Not read. I think we know by now that I read. More than that, I actually like to read. I also love to write, which is like reading by backwards. And I work in a bookshop, which more or less means I encourage people to read on a daily basis. At this point, I began to wonder if, by being the exact opposite of these kids, I was therefore "cool". I still disagree with the term, and I'm certainly nothing like them.

(c) Play X-Box. Okay, so I have a PS3. Well, I have 1/3 of a PS3. I sometimes get a chance to play it. Sometimes. I was asked if I played Skyrim, and I said yes, because I had to let a student know that I got his "arrow in the knee" reference, but it wasn't funny. He was asked to refrain from referencing the game again, or he'd have extra work. But a PS3 is not an X-Box.

So, I didn't do the three things they did. I was also eight years older than them, had an interest in religion and Shakespeare and gave them homework at least every second day. I gave punishment work and raised my voice at them when they spoke too loudly. I kicked people out of class (but kept them within sight with the door open, as I am legally obliged to). I did everything a teacher does. But I was described as "cool". I am as confused as you, believe me.

(And in case you think I'm being entirely self-critical, I told my friends about this: they laughed.)

As well as "cool", though, I was also "scary". The same student used these two words. I kind of understand the "scary" part, though. I raised my voice a lot. I didn't shout exactly, but when I do that Drama thing of raising my voice without much effort, it can get to a class. The teacher is supposed to shout and lose their voice. Then they lose the class and the students can keep on talking. After all, learning isn't "cool". But God I love learning.

There is a point to all of this, though. For a start, I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not think I am "cool". I am relateable and mostly easy to get along with. I am sometimes funny and sometimes smart and I almost always listen when someone needs to talk. I make stupid mistakes and embarrass myself, which makes people laugh. But being annoying, clumsy and in Drama does not typically equate to someone being "cool". Therefore, I conclude that I subverted the norm of social standards in terms of "cool".

The second point is much briefer, and related to this exchange of words:

Student: Sir, will you just tell us your first name?

Me: Why do you even care about my first name?

Student: Because we want to add you on Facebook!

No matter how "cool" they think I am, I would never accept them on Facebook. Ever.

And the third point: I have a kind of catchphrase that I intend to keep ironic: "I'm cool like that." It doesn't work if people start calling me "cool", because then it turns from ironic and possibly annoying to just annoying. I'm annoying enough as it is!

The Secret Life of Teachers

Teachers are a fascinating breed of homo sapiens, brought up from a young age to memorise everything about everyone without fail. In my time in teaching, three super important and totally true things have come to my attention:

1. Teachers never leave the school grounds. Ever. They stay there overnight, thinking up new and interesting punishments for the children that they just have to tell everyone about. They shout it from the noticeboard, laughing maniacally. This is a fact. All pupils have been talked about in great detail. Teachers don't need their spare time during school hours for anything else.
2. Teachers do not sleep. There is no need to sleep when you have lived for thousands of years. The body becomes changed, less human. Teachers can use this time to correct the multitude of errors found in the homework of their pupils. Teachers enjoy nothing more than repeating the same lessons of 'there', 'their' and 'they're', and so on.
3. Teachers spend the weekend thinking up new ways to punish their students. There is nothing better for a teacher to do than to find new and interesting ways to make someone suffer. After all, teachers are all sadists.

You can totally trust me on this one. I've been in a staff room, hooked up to the mainframe* and interacted with most of the staff in a school. It's definitely all true.

*Staff rooms are the inspiration for the Borg in Star Trek.

Any Plan But a Lesson Plan

The one thing they don't warn us about in college is that lesson plans, being detrimental to banter, craic and "LOLs", can sometimes lead to this horrible form of procrastination in which the sufferer begins to plan everything. Except, of course, for the lessons. The psychosis is known to lead to planning away your youth until you're a withered old man or woman. More commonly, of course, the sufferer is left in a panic.

This, of course, leads to a number of stress related illnesses. Stress is known to lead to insomnia, lack of focus and a number of bowel movements that don't do well to describe. Add this to a classroom situation, and a student teacher may find him- or herself with a nasty case of God-knows-what, and failing to live up to their potential.

And why? Because, as a basic requirement, lesson plans cannot be done too far in advance of the class. However, given the nature of a teaching placement, designed to educate a student teacher in the ways of teaching, but not quite putting them into a full classroom experience in that we never truly know the pupils by the end of the period, it is impossible for the very basics of lesson plans to help.

How can a student teacher be expected to write up a number of lesson plans, never too far in advance, and still hope to maintain a shred of the necessary sanity to qualify teaching in a classroom? While it is capable to keep up with the workload, the real problem is starting.

Is there is a solution to this? Most likely. It would certainly help if one didn't ask so many questions. A proposed solution, of course, is to allow for a period of time, supervised and monitored, in which student teachers must draw up the first three lesson plans for each of their classes. In a supervised environment, with the lesson plans inspected and given construction criticism well in advance of the lessons, the student teacher - a strange specimen, half-way between qualified and stupefied - would be able to relieve some of the pressure.

For this to work, the environment in which the student teacher is being prepared ought to be made less stressful. While it is, of course, acceptable to assume that a degree of education must still take place, the way in which the student teacher is taught and assessed can be changed to allow for a different type of workload.

Back to my original point: planning. Lesson plans, being nigh-impossible to get to work on initially, lead to excessive planning. Holidays are booked, drink plans - a high risk social event so close to the teaching placement - are made and, in an extreme case, narrative plans are drawn out extending some years into the future. With so many plans being made - youth being wished away, while placement in a school situation wastes it away - it is not surprising that, given the insomnia and associated symptoms of stress, the student teacher suffers.

Consequently, the student teacher is not graded as they would be if they were to be inspected with pre-prepared lesson plans and a less stressful lead-up to the teaching experience. No longer in even a relative state of ease, the results of teaching placement, unless in monitoring an especially helpful class group and stress-free lesson, are subsequently inaccurate. The best they can hope to achieve is to monitor the implications of stress on a student teacher and the way in which he or she deals with this stress and still manages to cope.

There is, of course, a nugget of helpful advice within these words: de-stress, stay calm, and pretend there's nothing wrong with you. You might even believe it.

Being a Teacher

People seem to underestimate the work involved in being a teacher. I can say this, without conviction, because I have been doing some of the work of a teacher. If you think it's just standing up in front of a class and talking for the day, you're wrong. At primary level, which I've been getting lessons together for, there's a lot of creative thought necessary.

Why?

Because children don't want to listen to someone drone on about everything day-in, day-out for eight years. They need activities, stimulation, colour, videos, music, and time away from being spoken at about all the subjects they don't care for.

So what does a teacher have to do?

Let's put this into context: I have three classes to teach in January - 2 Religion and 1 English, every day for two weeks. For each of these three classes and for each of the weeks, I need to prepare what's called a Scheme of Work. I normally like scheming. This involves so much more than just minute preparation and a lot of winging it, though. Each scheme needs to cover the AIMS of the week's lessons, CONCEPTS & DEFINITIONS involved in the lessons, RESOURCES that were used to prepare the lesson and a DESCRIPTION of each of the five lessons per class per week.

After that, there then has to be a Lesson Plan for each of the lessons in each of the classes for both weeks. For me, with only a fraction of the work of a fully-qualified primary school teacher, this is still a huge amount of work: 15 lesson plans per week! New teachers would use lesson plans for a while until they had everything more or less prepared for the duration of their time teaching a particular school year, only tweaking things when necessary. However, this means an estimated 8-9 lesson plans per day, which amounts to 40-45 per week, for 37 weeks of the year (I'm told). That's 1,480-1665 per year. Bare in mind that many teachers stay with the same class group for two years, so they don't repeat a year until after they've done the same workload again.

That's a LOT of preparation...

And it's only the beginning! Teachers still have to prepare worksheets and resources for all of these lessons, and... yes, you guessed it: they have to teach the lessons. But it's not over after that. There's also this thing children hate called HOMEWORK and it has to be collected. Fun times, yeah?

And this is what I've signed up for, only with secondary schools instead. This means less freedom for lessons, but less subjects to cover. That doesn't make it easier, it just means that I'd have to teach up to six years worth of material. Yeah, that's more lesson plans the first time around. And with the way the curriculum is in English, it'd mean having to change the plans every year for fifth and sixth class, based on what texts are on for their Leaving Cert exams.

That doesn't sound like fun... why are you doing this again?

I ask myself that every time I have to do the preparatory work. I guess I just want to teach. I want to pass on knowledge, maybe make a generation of people excited about books and reading and, if I'm lucky and good enough, half-way decent citizens. Religion teaching isn't just "Yay God and all that"; it's about encouraging pupils to make an educated choice about religion; it's about teaching morals and values that have real importance in the world; it's about promoting equality and understanding and removing all the presumptions about other religious faiths, which I find to be of high importance given South Park's attacks on Judaism and Islam, even they're meant to just be funny; and it's about helping pupils to progress in their faith development.

Their...what?

Faith development; it's part of Robert Fowler's study of what he calls the stages of faith. They're not specific to Christianity, though a lot of the work was done in a Christian context. The stages of faith present a stage of someone's life, allowing them to understand the world in different ways to others of different stages. It's generally accepted that there are very few stage six people who ever lived... one of them is Jesus, another is Mahatma Ghandi. See? Universal! And Religion in schools is about helping people with their faith development so that they can understand the world in new lights. It's all very fascinating, really.

And this is what being a teacher is about?

Well, this is an idea of what being a teacher is about. Contextually, this is really what being an English and Religion teacher is about. Maths and Science teachers wouldn't be as concerned with faith development, I wouldn't imagine! But the workload is the same. It's a lot to do and a lot to teach, and while it's not as easy as people think, so far it's been as fulfilling. And I haven't even taught my lessons, yet!