Early steps for early careers teachers

 5 tips for the Autumn term

Tip 1: Start stocking up!

Bears and other woodland creatures spend an obscene amount of time collecting and hoarding the essentials for their winter hibernation. For teachers, the plethora of stationery and glue sticks seems to be a necessity to be an effective practitioner. We channel our inner ‘Supermarket Sweep’ contestant every time the stationery cupboard is open, and, by the Summer term, appear to have established an underground network of sources for any dwindling supplies.

Over time, you’ll seen that ‘effective’ teachers come in all shapes and sizes. It’s always beneficial to realise that some teachers will carry a holdall packed to the rim with equipment including white boards, visualizers and revision cards. For others, it will be just a pen. The bottom line is to find which strategies and resources work best for you and your students. These approaches may vary with classes, there may be lessons that lack the ‘flair’ that you may have come to associate with an ‘outstanding lesson’, but actually equip the students with all of the knowledge that you aimed to provide.

Contextualisation is key, and it’s the understanding of your classes (and not the thousands of highlighters you’ve gathered) that will get the best outcomes for your students.

Tip 2: Build a tool kit

The irony of suggesting that you stop stocking up, but then start building a toolkit is not lost on me – but it’s a metaphor, so stick with me. The best practitioners are those who are prepared to learn. They are the colleagues who recognise nuances – including that a teenager or younger child who are in education in this day and age will not have had the same experiences or access to resources that a child of the same age would have in previous years.

They are the teachers that acknowledge experience is a skill that doesn’t mean ‘it’s all been done before’, but instead that they have seen strategies done in different ways. As society and technology changes, so must our recognition of the strategies that we can incorporate in our lessons. Building a toolkit empowers you to recognise a range of strategies that you know have a positive impact on learning and that you can draw upon to support the students in your class. Whether you do so through resources such as Sherrington and Caviglioli’s Walkthrus, or through your school’s CPD package, the best techniques are the subtle changes that will make the knowledge stick.

Tip 3: Look to the destination, but be prepared to change your route

Having an awareness of the end point within topics, the year and the learning journey of your students as a whole is integral to promoting good progress. This is a point that is continuously reinforced in whichever teacher training route that you may have completed. However, one of the areas that isn’t necessarily considered in as much detail is the need for reactive adaptation.

This is not to be confused with preparing to accommodate, scaffold and challenge your learners, as Teaching Standard 5 is commonly a key focus point for training providers and schools alike. Instead, I’m referring to the ability to adapt on the spot –  to deviate from your plan and your trajectory based on your ability to ‘read the room’. Whether this is through formative assessment or summative assessment strategies, recognising the need to slow down or speed up not only takes an acute recognition of your classes’ needs, but also a confidence in your role as the professional.

Tip 4: Know yourself

I’ve spoken previously about realistic expectations and how important it is to be able to recognise not only distortion, but also the toxicity that can impact your personal and professional wellbeing. No matter what type of educational setting you are choosing to work in, in whichever role, there are very few professions that incorporate the same rollercoaster of emotions that teaching will provide. By having an acute awareness of your own mental health, your tells and triggers, this will allow you to form the foundations of self-regulation that will support you during times where you may be struggling. Once you’ve developed this inward focus on yourself, you can start to build your support circle that will further add to this support.

Tip 5: Preparation through prioritisation

More often than not, when we begin to feel the strain in this profession, it either has something to do with a particular reaction to a singular event that’s taken place (such as a confrontation or behaviour issue, which could be an article in itself!), or due to your workload and a sudden feeling that the plates are all spinning, but they’re starting to smash. In these cases, stopping and taking a second to react in a constructive and progressive manner is the best thing to do, and there are so many different strategies that can be used to support with this.

There are several techniques that you can look into in more detail to find your most effective approach to managing your workload, including:

• The Pomodoro Technique – Working in short time frames.
• Eat the frog – Tackle the big tasks first.
• Time Blocking – Schedule periods of time for specific tasks.
• Pareto Principle – Get the quick tasks out of the way.