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£350 of FREE Resources
I want to share with you something that changed my life and completely flipped my attitude toward teaching.
Then, I will give away for free, if you can pay the postage, the £350 worth of resources I needed to complete the task.
Last year I was asked to do some supply teaching for a class of 15 and 16-year-olds.
'Sure' I said, how hard could it be!
Within my first three sessions, I was about to find out.
These were rough kids, with no interest in being in education, by the Wednesday I was ready to call the agency and say this is not for me.
The following week was no better, waking in the middle of the night with a knot in my stomach fearing what uncontrollable challenges were going to hit me the next day.
Passive aggressive verbal abuse, hoodies over the heads as their faces melt into the desk, fingers constantly flicking on phones with their junky-like need to get a fix on anxiety.
Andrew Harold
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Ban the phones
Seriously, I don't care who I offend, who in the right mind thinks it's appropriate to have phones in lessons?
It's ridiculous! It undermines teachers, creates anxiety in pupils, and stops their learning. Rant over!
So I took a risk
By the end of the second week, it was all getting too much, I wasn't prepared for this, the kids were just getting more unruly, and despite my experience, my self-esteem was plummeting. This was not good!
So with nothing else to lose, I proposed that the class write a poem. I handed out the resources, to which one student threw it back onto the table and said 'I'm not into this shit'
Five minutes later, to my shock and amazement, the classroom was silent, as the majority of the class got on with writing their poems. (two, still on their phones)
It Changed My Life
About an hour later, the first writings started coming through, and OMG!
But not poems, messages from their lives, their loneliness, their confusion, their false personas, their self-harming. (yes, be prepared for their truths)
It would appear for the first time, and I have to say, by pure accident, they had been given permission to say 'This is me' and for the first time, I could see them not as just pupils in a class, but just amazing human beings wanting to express and find themselves themselves.
Their words were truly moving, even the rough as f*&% lads gave it a bash and came up with unbelievable prose.
Emboldened
What can I say?
For me, the change was immediate. I still can't quite get my head around it. Of course, a couple out of the cohort of 25 didn't engage as much as I wanted them to, but they watched on respectfully.
So I thought, OK, let's try some meditation. Silence.
By the end of this meditation session the following week, one of the class came up to me and asked if the whole class could write a poem together.
So that was our project for the next two weeks!
Caveat
I genuinely do not share this with you out of self-praise, but merely to demonstrate the effect that this style of education can have.
I have always known about the power of meditation and creative writing, but never seen its results so effectively demonstrated as above.
The remaining months on my contract I can only describe as idyllic from such challenging beginnings.
On my last day, I could see half the group hanging outside one of my lessons to say their goodbye's. I'm not normally moved by such things. This was followed by a message on the school's internal messaging service.
We all know teaching can be tough, but if the cap fits, please take advantage of this free offer
