YOUNG TEACHERS

YOUNG TEACHERS
STRUGGLING AS A STUDENT TEACHER
Jessie Hodson (Manchester)
Welcome to manchester! As a student teacher, I hope NUT Conference is going to make a stand on behalf of young teachers – and teachers-to-be!
Students across the country are facing increasing debt and struggling to maintain a decent standard of living within university. Trainee teachers are facing not only the hardship of increasing debt and tuition fees but also the pressure of diving into the deep end of the teaching.
At Manchester Metropolitan, to fit with the government’s new standards for teachers, first year students found themselves as the first ever to have to write a 6000 word assignment. These first years have become the guinea pigs for the new standards and have been forced into the world of e-notice boards to know when a lesson will take place.
Despite the increase in tuition fees we are being given less for our money. Under the guise of being more ‘eco-friendly’, students are been given fewer hand outs. Even the primary framework is being given to us on discs that do not work!
So the upcoming group of teachers will be facing increasing debt and a limited understanding of many of the standards placed on the primary sector.
Money worries are forcing more people out of their degree. Many students have dropped out scared of increasing debt. At my placement school one TA who was also training part time as a teacher had to leave his course and his job because of the increasing cost.
For student teachers the worry of how much they spend a week is increased by what they then have to spend on travel and materials for their placement.
If not for the kindness of a teacher at my placement school, I would be spending about £20 a week on travel to enable myself to continue my chosen career. This may not seem a lot to some but to a student this can mean one less meal or even a night out.
Trainee teachers are becoming less confident within their course to understand what they are teaching and then suffer from their inability to provide their class with the creative activities that they wish due to financial costs.
Too many in schools are already facing cuts and the new regulations and grading for TAs is causing a lot of confusion. School staff try to be welcoming but, understandably, student teachers are yet another burden to take on.
In many schools, student teachers are being made to feel unwanted and unwelcome, making some students regret their decision to go into teaching.
In short, whether we’re still training to teach, or a young teacher starting out in the classroom, we face the same burdens – debt and overwork.
But a teacher’s life shouldn’t be about working too many hours for too little pay. That’s why I hope that the NUT involves its young teachers – and encourages them to stand up for their futures – by voting YES for strike action!
Why I’m Leaving Teaching
Jim Lowe (Devon NUT)
I didn’t go into teaching wide-eyed and with untrammelled idealism. I realised the job was imperfect and the circumstances I would have to do it in would be even more so.
However, in my NQT year, I have decided to leave, while I still look like I’ve got my youth, and my levels of stress and cynicism aren’t maintained at a damaging level.
I went into teaching because of my passion and interest for science. I wanted, naturally, for others to feel the same. What I didn’t realise was that the wriggle room available in New Labour’s education system to be able to do that has become unbearably tiny.
I know I’m not alone in this, and this doesn’t just apply to science. The pressure of SATs and the need to get a certain % A*-C means we are instructed (and I certainly have been instructed) to teach to the test. This gives sausage factories a bad name. Is there any wonder why there is so much dissatisfaction with school amongst young people?
And then we come to workload. I’m not afraid of hard work, but I am afraid of not having a life to be able to do all the things I enjoy, to read, catch up with family and friends, and so on. I thought at first that this absence of ‘work-life balance’ (the kind of balance you get when an elephant sits on one end of a swing and a flea on the other) would be restricted to the first few years. But I see mid-career teachers, some with no extra areas of responsibility, worked to the bone and with little time for much else.
There are other problems. I don’t have a mastery of behaviour management. No doubt given time I might have gained this, but ‘management’ of behaviour assumes there is little to be done about the root causes of poor behaviour. Sure, there are things we can do in the classroom, making work interesting, relevant and differentiated, and employ all sorts of little techniques, but ultimately this doesn’t cope with behaviour that manifests itself because of demotivation.
In my school, the demotivation is not because it is in a deprived area, far from it. The demotivation has many causes. Lack of skilled jobs locally; Narrow horizons; An almost hothouse approach on the part of the school to exam results. I could list others.
The funny thing is, this whole defective system means that intelligent people acting rationally (from senior management through middle management to ordinary teachers) produce wholly irrational outcomes. Irrational for teachers, sure, but ultimately and most importantly for children and society at large.
I’m lucky. I don’t have dependants or a mortgage, and I was able to get out, and get a job that if not as well paid, at least doesn’t come with the stress, tiredness, constant change and pressure from above that teaching comes with.
It will take serious change for teaching to become a career that is enjoyable and attractive. It is serious change that this union must fight for. We don’t know yet the result of the pay ballot. I hope that the result is a resounding ‘Yes’ and the action the union takes results in a pay rise at least that of inflation.
But that must only be the start. The threats of Excessive Workload, Performance Management, Ofsted, SATS and League Tables, all linked by the fact that they are logical conclusions of New Labour’s neo-liberal worldview, must be challenged.
The education of children may suffer for or a few days of strike action but if that action is not taken on these issues, the education of children will suffer for years to come.