The Power and the Passion

I’ve found over the last five years of being in the teaching game, that teaching has a lot to do with red tape and impossibly high expectations from teachers AND students and very little to do with open communication. Let me explain. There are amazing teachers out there. I’m proud to say I’m friends with several of them. They are passionate, dedicated, knowledgeable, personable and kind. They know their students, they know their subject area and they know their job. Unfortunately, with every new school year comes a new scheme. A new curriculum. A new way to mark work. A new way to write reports. A new way of doing things. Rarely are we given the opportunity to fully develop a unit of work before it is changed or ‘tweaked’ to fit a new expectation or standard of the Department of Education or the school itself.

Click to read more ...

Darwin's Theory of Yard Duty

How many of you, on a beautiful Spring day (or any day, for that matter), whilst sitting at your desk doing whatever it is you do, have played this game:

‘I’m not a window cleaner in a lap dance room... I’m not a child labourer in Asia... I’m not a coal miner in 1862... I’m not Naomi Campbell’s Personal Assistant...’

So frequently we find ourselves unhappy with our choice of occupation or, more specifically, unhappy with particular parts of our choice of occupation.

We cheeky humans can never be fully satisfied no matter how good we’ve got it, and even though I’m grateful to be a teacher and I enjoy my job (most of the time), there are still elements that grate and cause me to play a round or two of ‘I’m Not A...’ every now and again.

Click to read more ...