nny | Too long. Read it anyway.

Teaching, I have learned over and over again as I go through training, is quite incredibly important to me. One of the things that had a huge impact on me was a Headteacher who was giving us a talk about... assessment techniques, I think; that wasn't really the part that struck me. What hit me right between the eyes was the way he looked at us in silence for a moment or two and then said "think about why you want to be a teacher. And if you can't give me a reason, give up this course right now." It is distressing how many times I've heard people say it's because of the money that the government pays us to train. It is distressing how many times I've felt pressured into saying that myself, merely because I don't have the time or the energy to go into the many and varied reasons that I do have, that are important to me.

Nothing, nothing frustrates me and angers me more, when I talk about - or hear others talk about - my job, than the idiots that say 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.' There is very little I have done in my life that has been harder than standing up in front of a group of 16 year olds - a group of 16 year olds who have been placed in a bottom set, who have been led to believe that education is, if not useless entirely, then at least inaccessible to them, who have lost patience with being told over and over again that their behaviour is unacceptable, their work is unacceptable, their intelligence is unacceptable - and telling them 'you should listen to me because what I have to say to you is important. You should listen to me because you can do this.' But you know what? I did it. I did it, and I got them to listen, and I got them to do work, and I got them to say - sounding surprised, and that frustrates and upsets me more than anything else - "hey, that was actually interesting!"

I love books, I love the English language, I love the incredible variety of ways that people can express themselves and the incredible variety of ways that people can reinterpret and identify with that expression. I love dabbling in new media and coming up with new ways to teach what I love so that students can start to develop their own enthusiasm for what I try to teach them. I do this because nothing makes me happier than reading something I love, except perhaps producing something in which I manage to articulate precisely what I mean to, and if I can help other people to do that...

I teach because I love it, and I teach because I can. I don't teach because of the money or the holidays or the training grant, but the stigma attached to teaching sometimes just makes it so much easier to say that.

Obviously, as with most things, you can't understand until you've done it. And I understand completely that it wouldn't be some people's cup of tea. I also understand that tea is not some people's cup of tea, although I am allowed to think you crazy for it. It doesn't dismay me that some people don't want to teach, and I'm not trying to evangelise the wonders of the teaching profession because it's a fuck of a lot of hard work, it's difficult, it's frustrating, it's tiring. But it is something that I refuse to be embarrassed about. Because the worst thing about the stigma attached is that I heard it more than at any other time in my life from people who were studying at university. The people who were supposed to be the intelligent ones, the people who didn't seem to realise that they were where they were because of teachers. No matter what they might liked to have believed, they got to that position in life because of the education they had received (as well as the privileges that came as a part of their background, but that's a whole other post) and yet it was the done thing to sneer at the people that had got them there. Fuck those people, frankly. I am proud of what I have done, and I am proud of what I have the potential to do.

And the second part of that is the hard part, of course. Because it's not just my responsibility to educate within the subject I've chosen. It's not just my place to be an English teacher, and not just because of the pastoral duties that I will have to pick up as part of my role as form tutor within the school. One of the standards for Qualified Teacher Status is to 'demonstrate the positive values, attitudes and behaviour they expect from children and young people.' Which leaves me with a hell of a lot of learning to do.

I have to not only know about the English language, but also to attempt to be a repository for all knowledge that the pupils need, or at least be aware of how I can get it. I have to be able to explain in ways that the pupils will understand why it is unacceptable to call another pupil a Jew or a gay as a term of insult. I have to explain racism carefully so that pupils understand that using 'black' as an insult is not in any way the same as using 'tall' as an insult, just because they are both things you're born with. I have to try and gently challenge the received beliefs that the pupils have come to the school with, both good and bad, and attempt to come up with ways to educate them in challenging their own beliefs. I have to constantly be aware of the fact that my beliefs and upbringing shape the way that I look at and interact with the world, too, and I have to be prepared to learn from my pupils just as much as my pupils will (hopefully) learn from me.

chopchica made an excellent post over here about the Holocaust and about how shameful it is how little is known about it by so many. I commented saying that stuff like that is a huge part of why I want to be a teacher, and she (very kindly!) responded that "Comments like this are why you're going to be such an amazing one." And the bitch of it is that I shouldn't be a damned exception.

Teachers cannot help but be a massively formative influence on their pupils' lives. If people choose to become teachers, then it is their responsibility to be fucking good ones.