Then and Now - Part 1

In this post, I would like to talk about how people view teachers in wider society. Despite only having been a teacher for a short amount of time, I can still see how people’s perceptions of teachers have changed over the years. I’m going to be splitting this topic into a couple of posts to help to organise my own thoughts so that this doesn’t end up being just a ‘hodgepodge’ of thoughts.

If you go back 10 years, telling people that you were a teacher would probably be met with an ‘oh really? Wow!’ Fast forward to now and the reception that you get is very different. “It must be great to go home at 3:15 every day!”, “I bet you only do it for the holidays”, and the good old “all teachers do is complain!”

Below is an open letter that I wrote to a taxi driver that I once spoke to who had some very negative things to say about teaching, and even got quite nasty and worked up about it. I wrote this when I was an NQT but never actually published it anywhere…until now (dramatic music).

An open letter to the taxi driver who said that my job must be so easy:

First of all, thank you for referring to teaching as a job, not a career or vocation. It absolutely does not take a certain type of person to become a great teacher.

I am well aware that we get more time out of our place of work than many other people do; however, that does not mean that I am not still working myself to the bone to prepare your children for the future.

I am sure that you, like me, must spend hours outside of work preparing for your shifts, analysing data, planning ahead, contacting a wide variety of people in order to ensure that you are providing the absolute best service for your clients.

I am sure that you must lose sleep over what you have to do the next day and sacrifice time with your family and friends to try to perfect what you do on a day-to-day basis.

I am sure that you have piles and piles of data on all of your clients that you have to take into consideration on every shift and that you must sometimes change everything that you have planned in order to support that one person who may struggle to understand your methods.

I am sure that you may also need a second or even third invaluable adult in with you in order to support some of your weaker or more challenging pupils.

I am sure that your job must push you to breaking point and back as you prepare for inspections and observations that can happen at any time and that can sometimes decide your future in your job.

You are clearly a person who has been through the education system 20 years ago and, as a result, you are clearly an expert in this.

In no way would I ever mock what you do, complain about your ‘time off’ or make complaints about how you run your life, as I understand that what you do IS valuable to society. So why must you do this to me?

Think of it this way: what would the world become if we lost education?

There have been many times in this job when I have screwed up – I am definitely not going to pretend that it’s never happened. It’s not an easy thing to do, and the learning curve is massive.

One of the biggest things I’ve learnt to deal with is comments from people outside of school. Be that parents telling me off for sending a letter home about their child telling another student to “f*** off” in a lesson (they were just playing a game!) or people in public thinking that I have it so easy, getting all of this free time to myself!

When I first started working as a teacher, I used to get so mad when people belittled what I do. Now, I take a bit of a different turn, just to throw people off. Again, this is where the dry sense of humour comes in (I would definitely say that you should try this next time someone makes a comment to you about how much time you have off). All you need to do is straighten your back, look them straight in the eye and say with the biggest smile you can “I know, it’s amazing!”

Until next time

H x