Archive for March, 2008

Old wives tales

March 24, 2008 at 3:49 pm · Filed under Blogroll, IT, Old wives tales, PGCE, Student Teachers, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, teacher training, teaching

I have it from the highest authority that I am destined to be the perfect teacher and that every school in England, nay the world, should be crawling on their knees to my door begging me to work in their school. That authority is my mum, and are you calling her a liar?

To be fair, she is getting on a bit, and is prone to old wives tales, but let me tell you, some of those old wives are pretty sharp. I count my mum amongst them, and on this point at least, I whole-heartedly agree with her. In terms of academic qualification, I reckon I’m comfortably in the top half of trainee teachers. Without being disrespectful, it appears to me that it’s not too tough to get a degree nowadays, I’m not saying you just have to turn up, but when I see some of the folks on the course struggle with the primary level maths it does make me wander. I do realise that maths isn’t everyone’s bag, but really.

And then there is my work experience. I’ve been working in IT for 20 years, and I’m pretty comfortable around it (or should that be IT?). There is quite a lot of research out there that says using IT in a not too half-brained way can have a significant effect on learning. Of course, there is also a lot of stuff around to say that it doesn’t make much difference at all, but I’m going with the first lot, so my experience should really count for something. Not that I haven’t got a lot to learn about its use in primary schools, but judging by some of the questions teachers ask me, I’m way ahead of the game on this point.

And then there are my physical characteristics, I’m a bloke who is not entirely white. I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere in the country, but around my neck of South-West London, as a primary school teacher that would definitely mark me out as an endangered species.

On top of this, I would like to think that I can actually teach, and my first block experience would indicate this.

So, job done. I shouldn’t even have to apply for jobs, logically they should come looking for me. And if I really do have to go through that whole interview thing, then, hell, I’ll just knock’em dead with good looks, easy going manner, and razor-sharp intellect. But Houston, we have a problem. The couple of jobs I’ve applied for so far I haven’t even got an interview. The first one I got some very good feedback on, it was a points scoring thing and there were a couple of areas I hadn’t covered off, so I didn’t get through. The second one was explicitly looking for someone with great IT skills, but again, I got a thanks but no thanks without even getting to see them face to face.

I don’t know how much of this is denial (denial is not a river in Africa) and how much truth there is in it, but I’d like to think that its not anything intrinsic about me, but there is a game to be played and I’m not fully aware of the rules. When you think about it, the whole recruitment thing for teachers is quite perfunctory (- adjective – performed merely as a routine duty; hasty and superficial), you write a bunch of stuff in an application, if you’re very lucky they get to see you teach an unfamiliar class for 20 minutes, and then a 20 minute interview. In the city, you’d go through at least 6 interviews of up to 2 hours each.

Whatever the reason, I really need to sort this out quickly. I have a family I need to support, and I have to work. If it’s not as a teacher, it needs to be something else, and I’m not in a position to be able to rely on supply teaching. So I have a fear that it may all be for nowt. Unless I can get an application form together that allows me to get in front of an interview panel, and can turn that into an actual job, I may need to go back to the city. And once I‘ve done that, it is far from clear whether I will be able to go back into teaching, I don’t know how schools would react to an NQT not working in teaching, and I don’t know how keen my family would be on taking that cut in income again.

So, I need to get an application form together that get me interviews, and I need to turn that into a job. Failure is not an option.

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Be careful what you wish for

March 9, 2008 at 9:21 pm · Filed under Blogroll, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, teacher training, teaching

So far, I have been worrying about relatively small inconsequential things, like finishing the course and finding a job, when what I really should have been worrying about is what happens if (that is a really big if, and, as we all know, size matters) I do manage both of these.

I’ve started going around schools with a view to applying to them. Of course, its all a façade. I don’t particularly want to look around the school, and sure as a sure thing in suresville, the deputy head doesn’t want to spend 2 days of her life showing a bunch of people around her school, the vast majority of which won’t get close to interview. But that’s the game, she has to make a point of showing us around, and we have to make a point of going around and asking intelligent questions (note to self, do ask intelligent questions, or, failing that, ask questions. Standing there surreptitiously staring at the receptionist isn’t going to cut it).

Of course, I’m not the only one, there are a number of other people being shown around at the same time, and is pretty easy to put my finger on what it is that marks me out as different – I’m the only bloke. I’m the only male applicant in a list of applicants to get into a primary school where all the staff are female. When you think about it like that, it’s pretty stark.

Not that I didn’t know this, I’ve know it from the start, this is the life I choose. The TES (that’s Times Educational Supplement for any readers not yet inducted into the educational TLA’s) did paint a rather bleak picture this week. No other males = no talking about footy. Instead, you need to gen up on the calorific value of every food stuff on the planet in order to have any chance of being included on a conversation. Again, I know this, I’ve been on my block practice, I’ve sat in staffrooms where the conversation has all been about THAT dress. I guess I was just in denial, and maybe that’s a country I should re-visit.

But there are some rather delicate questions that I’d like to raise that I’m not sure are acceptable in interviews. I’d like to think that I was pro tearing down taboos and demystifying human bodily functions, but can I really sit in an interview and ask if all the staff have synchronised their periods? As far as I am aware it’s a pretty well established physiological phenomenon, and it is actually quite import. Imagine going to environment where once a month the other 50 people want to rip your head off. Maybe this is the real reason the government is trying to encourage more men into education. As far as I’m aware, and according to the TES, the research is quite inconclusive of this point, there’s no particularly good reason for encouraging more men to be teachers. But if the prospect of this phenomenon scares me, imagine what it is going to do to the children.

Of course, there is upside to working with an all female staff, and the receptionist at the last school I went to definitely falls into that category. Unfortunately, there won’t be anyone I can talk to about this. Except, of course, statistically speaking with that many women some of them are bound to have alternative orientations, maybe they would be open to dialogue on the relative attractiveness of different women.

Only thing is, being a bloke, I’m totally unaware of this sort of thing, so the only way I could identify my own potential talk partner would be to ask at interview, and that’s a question I definitely couldn’t ask.

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