Seven golden rules for early career teachers

1, Find your ‘promise’ in compromise

Most of the mathematics they taught you at school will have been – at best – moderately useful. This is one of those times. Imagine the simplest of Venn diagrams – two ovals with one area of overlap. One oval is you – Alex Norman – the other is labelled “teacher”.

Survival as a teacher involves successfully discovering your classroom self, the sweet spot of overlap between the two, the area you’d label Ms or Mr Norman.

There is no escaping the power that has been newly bestowed upon you. That’s all the stuff in the “teacher” oval – the rule-giving, the sanction-enforcing, the I-stand-at-the-front-ness of it all. And you have to accept this. You can’t be the clever exception – the one who will be able to go in and be authentically Alex Norman – because your students don’t want this. They want you to be Ms Norman, their teacher, who sets boundaries and runs an ordered classroom but who does so by being as much of themselves – as true to Alex Norman – as possible, not just some automaton, mindlessly dispensing homework and detentions like confetti.