NQT Special: Do you FIRE their imaginations?

What do you teach? Now you are a teacher I’m sure you get asked this question a lot. There are two replies. You can tell them your subject. The alternative is far more powerful: “I teach young people.”

It is more than semantics. To declare the subject suggests your goal is to deliver a specific body of knowledge that your students need to acquire. It is understandable in secondary education where success can be measured by assessment outcomes linked to that knowledge.

However, to declare you are teaching young people shows a wider awareness of your role – your goal is to develop your students as people; to inspire a love of learning, beginning with a grasp of the process itself. You realise students aren’t born knowing how to learn, they need to be taught. You’re a contributor to that process. Of course you can inspire a student to love your subject, but the outstanding teacher helps to develop their personality too. So how can you develop your students as people? To make it easier to remember, I’ve used the acronym FIRE.