How’s it going after two weeks back in the ring? Purring along nicely? Sun-tan fading, but the teaching a breeze? Perhaps you’d forgotten just how richly fulfilling this lark can be? Or perhaps not? It might feel more like minor trauma? Are you already zonked and considering vagrancy? Many, apparently, are.
Well, consider the NQTs.
Like Ms Sissy Jupe, English teacher. She’s already excellent, a natural – very bright, inner city sussed, passionate about the subject, witty, funny – and she likes children. These may count against her. Mere control seems all the rage these days. It goes far beyond the received wisdom that I was given so long ago. You know... get September right and the rest will follow, get it wrong and you’re toast, be firm but fair, you’re not their friend, and don’t smile ‘til Christmas.
Sissy knows. Bleedin’ Obvious. Dismal stuff. At Dutch Elm Academy control seems to have become the main event. To facilitate this process Sissy must look grim or like Liz Kendall or a beautician at Boots. It’s hard work and she too is quite zonked after two weeks.
She’s in at dawn and then must be sure that e-mails are checked, phone calls made, peccadillos punished, intentions elucidated, threats executed, seating plans followed, plants watered, dress codes checked, registers taken in Trappist silence, that her marking’s forensic, her stare glacial, gravitas formal, mischief nipped in bud, management appeased, Mission Statements not mocked, workshops endured, lessons robotically planned, paced, differentiated, nuanced from soup to nuts, from intentions to plenaries – all of course topped off with a bloom of high expectations, low wages, no sleep, zero-tolerance and inspectors ticking off her targets.
This empathy bypass is all the go. It’s called “professional”. It wears her out. It’s not natural. She can’t do it, especially with her 7th years, who delight her and keep making her laugh.
“You’re not here to like them.”
Well, I think you probably are. You should show it. Of course control is necessary, but this hanging judge stuff has gone too far. Still, I suppose it saves any actual teaching.
Is this why NQTs are quitting? Or not even joining? New figures reveal an alarming shortfall in NQT recruitment. There are many reasons, but being a general shock absorber of the present moronic inferno in order to pay the rent for a matchbox in Earls Court doesn’t help – and nor does this culture of control.
Sissy connects with children. Only connect and control just follows.
Will she survive the year? Who knows? My old lag’s advice – look a bit grim, but do smile by October.
- Ian Whitwham is a former inner city London teacher.