Blast from the past

My journey into primary teaching

[This is a blog I wrote 4½ years ago for Men Teach Primary which I am putting up here mainly so I don’t lose it! I remembered that I had written it when somebody was asking me about retraining as a teacher after another career…. The Men Teach Primary blog doesn’t seem to be being updated any more but it is a wonderful resource for any men out there thinking about teaching primary with lots more stories that are more interesting than mine. Give it a look if your are interested.

Obviously, this is very early on in my teaching journey but I don’t think I have changed my mind that the amount we ask class teachers in primary to do is *mind-blowing* compared with the average job!]

After nearly 25 years as a lawyer (and nearly 13 years as a partner), lockdown gave me the chance to reflect on what I wanted to do with my remaining working life. Whilst my time as lawyer had been a successful and fulfilling career, I had a nagging sense that I wanted to give something back to society. I had seen the Now Teach initiative that had been launched to give career changers a helping hand into teaching and the actions of its founder, Lucy Kellaway, had given me the idea that teaching could be an option. Starting a new career at the age of 48 is a fairly daunting experience but I realised that it would only get more difficult to make a move….

One of the early decisions I had to make was whether to go into primary or secondary teaching. As someone who had studied Law as a first degree and Politics as a second, there wasn’t an obvious secondary subject for me to teach. Maths and English were both possibilities but I would have not felt comfortable teaching Maths at A Level when that was my own highest qualification. With primary, I also had the advantage of lots of experience with my own children! In the end, I decided on teaching Primary with a Maths specialism, both because of the bursary and because of the extra support it would give me in teaching maths. Discussions with friends in the teaching profession also made me realise that maths was highly valued everywhere and would be a useful specialism to have. This usefully narrowed down the overwhelming number of courses and I eventually took up a School Direct place on the UCL IOE Maths Pathway course.

I had hoped to spend the summer doing lots of advance reading but the expected drop off in legal work never really materialised so I arrived on the course with a lot of catching up to do compared with some of the more diligent students. That said, my main teaching group of 25 has been very supportive and the range of backgrounds means that there are lots of diverse perspectives to learn from (as well as our lecturers who seem desperately disappointed not to meet us in person!). As a result, my learning has gone well despite the inevitable fatigue of so much teaching online. However, my workload dramatically increased after half-term when I took on my first school placement…

I always knew that teachers worked hard but nothing quite prepares you for the reality of life in a busy primary school. It is both daunting and awe-inspiring to see the amount of work undertaken by the class teachers. They have to be masters of the full range of subjects, plan the lessons and be the primary point of contact for their pupils for everything school-related. The UCL course starts with you mainly teaching groups so that you don’t have to try to manage behaviour in a full class at the start of the placement. Nonetheless, I did manage to progress to quite a bit of full-class teaching by the final week of the placement and will be doing much more of it after February half-term (Covid permitting). In the meantime, I am learning about online teaching and trying to progress some of the academic components. It’s been a fascinating journey – as tough and fulfilling as I thought it would be.

Any gripes? Just the perpetual one of paperwork. In my opinion, the Teachers’ Standards are a good framework but the amount of paper generated to demonstrate compliance could really do with some streamlining.