Pedagogical frauds

Here are a few thoughts thrown together about teaching - which seem to have escaped certain non-class-based educators from my 15 years experience in London schools. 

Maybe they were overworked. 

Maybe they had forgotten what it was like to be class-based. 

Maybe they had forgotten the very foundations of teaching, respect and integrity. 

Maybe they couldn’t have cared less. 

Anyway, in no particular order, I give you:

Attributes that do not make a good teacher:

• Diplomas/being able to pontificate about pedagogical ideas du jour. Weeks and weeks of meetings on fashionable topics such as adaptive teaching, creative curriculum, restorative justice, etc. sometimes only seem to serve the purpose of box-ticking, when far more pressing concerns (such as behaviour management and mental health for instance) could be discussed, and potential solutions implemented. 

• Being able to create attractive excel spreadsheets, including impracticable timetables and preposterous action plans. 

• The inability to manage a class' behaviour, or get children to produce the work set for them, despite clear expectations and planning set by class teachers: an altogether too frequent and embarrassing occurrence - how quickly one seems to forget how to teach (presuming the ability was ever there). 

• Bribing challenging classes with sweets and biscuits, all the while taking credit for leading on healthy eating surely takes the biscuit when it comes to double standards.

• Accepting bedlam in the classroom: it is not a good look when a class teacher has to return to class -from non-contact time, namely PPA- to restore behaviour standards. It is not a good look when the cover teacher could not maintain these standards alone (especially when said cover teacher is supposedly an experienced practitioner and SLT member). This is made even worse when it is children from said class who have left the classroom, without the cover teacher’s knowledge/permission, to fetch the class teacher.     

• Incompetence: as for cover teachers who seem to think themselves above planning, or actually incapable of doing so, and who break down when requested to plan for covered sessions, well, enough said…

• Malice: practioners who gleefully take part in hatchet jobs on well-respected class teachers - esteemed by children and parents alike are as despicable as they come. Especially when:
• they question teachers’ excellent rapport with their class when theirs is so severely lacking;
• they criticise teachers’ planning when their own has been dismissed by many other as, at best: sparse and vague, and at worst: unusable.

On the other hand, I give you a few obvious…

Attributes that make a good teacher:

• Being able to maintain behaviour to enable all children to learn,
• Keeping children’s interest,
• Establishing a rapport of reciprocal trust,
• Establishing a good learning environment where all children are nurtured.

These not constitute rocket science. I have not made anything up: in fact, I am merely echoing the Teachers’ Standards as set out by the DfE. 

Certain people would do well to refamiliarise themselves with them: they can be easily viewed, even from crumbling ivory towers…