I'm a trainee teacher and I need help...

I've been at this teaching thing for four years now and I've learnt more in that time than I have in the rest of my life combined. I've also made more mistakes than at any other time.

Training to be a teacher is far more difficult than I think anyone ever imagines it to be. We've all been taught by a wide range of teachers who influence the practitioner that we become. We've had a "bad" teacher who is really struggling and we vow never to make the same errors as them. We also have the "good" teachers who make it all look effortless and they are the ones who lead us to the conclusion that we too can be like them.

I'm not expert teacher and I regularly make mistakes but I do want to contribute some answers for the benefit of trainee teachers and newly qualified teachers to reinforce that you are not alone in the struggles that you're having. 

Theft and the happy teacher

In order to make ends meet when I was a lowly paralegal I used to tutor A level sociology and law students. It has probably been the most valuable learning experience I have ever had, both in my subject area and also in pedagogy.

I charged a small but reasonable sum for my time and my services became quite popular, I was getting so many referrals that the decision to leave the law and pursue teaching was almost out of my hands, either the law or the teaching had to give and I hated the law side and love the teaching so it was very simple.

I figured out how to plan a lesson almost on my own and I look back on these plans and they're pretty basic. Students must have noticed a huge difference between what they did with me in our sessions and lessons they had at college and I'm sure the main reason why they got a lot out of it was because it was one to one.

The one thing I didn't understand or realise was that resources are not going to be original. I discovered websites like TES resources and Resourcd pretty early on, but I always thought that I had to hide the fact that I was using these things. I used to make great chunks of notes from the textbooks to make it look like I'd come up with it all and, granted it reinforced my own subject knowledge, but it was not a productive use of my time. It would take me as long to prepare for a session as it did to actually teach it,

Its taken me a long time to realise that taking a ready made resource, whether it's a worksheet, an activity or a presentation, is not cheating, it's common sense. As long as I am carefully checking the resources, tailoring them to my students and removing any other college's proprietary branding then I would be mad not to when the thing that I need already exists.

My message is mainly for new teachers, you have more things to do that you have hours in the day, you'll need to find as many short cuts as you possibly can and using someone else's resources in your lesson is somewhere that you can legitimately do this. It's not cheating and its not wrong. You're freeing up your time to do more important things like giving brilliant personalised feedback when marking student work, creating innovative differentiation strategies and maybe, just maybe, doing something for yourself like going home on time or having a lie in.

Journey to 'recently qualified teacher'

I've been asked to take part in delivering a session to a group of newly qualified teachers who are just finishing their first year teaching. My role is going to be as someone who is a little further through the process and is reflecting on where they have come from to where they are now. I need to have a little think about what I'm going to say without being too teacher-y. There is nothing worse as a professional teacher having a colleague talking to you as if you're a student.

The second year

Teaching is not the first career I've trained for, so I had the benefit of something to compare it to. Before I was a teacher I had gone a fair distance down the road of qualifying as a solicitor, specialising in criminal defence and immigration. I'd spent years of my life and tens of thousands of pounds getting to that point. I worked at three law firms, initially as an unpaid intern and then moving in to paid positions. Six months unpaid is a rite of passage most wannabe solicitors have to go through.

I started at my last first and initially thought:

"I'm not enjoying this, but it's probably because I'm new and it’s difficult not knowing anything". 

After a few months I wasn't new anymore but my feelings hadn't changed. I put on a brave face.

"It's better than nothing". 

Then moving to:

"I don't like this at all". 

Then:

"I really dislike this" 

Finally the slow acknowledgement of what I'd really known all along.

"I hate this"

The point that I realised that practicing law was completely wrong for me was when I noticed that the feeling of dread at going back on Monday would come on at lunch time on Saturday. Something had to change. I distinctly remember sitting upstairs at Coventry Crown Court waiting for a sentencing hearing of a violent mugger with a serious drug additions and it was there and then that I decided that the was going to become a teacher.

Over the past three years, through PGCE, NQT and RQT I've lived in fear of that feeling returning, but it never has. I tell you all of this in the hope that you have no idea what I'm talking about and you certainly can't relate at the moment. If you're sitting there and you relate you need to do something about it, immediately.

NQT year is tough and I was certainly not overjoyed throughout. At first teaching was the only thing that existed in my life. My time was absorbed by making resources from scratch, drafting and redrafting schemes of work, attending CPD and implementing new strategies. There was no room to anything else and what I was doing lacked the polish which comes from using a reflection cycle. During RQT the emphasis moves away from doing everything from scratch towards modifying and perfecting and as a consequence lessons become more cohesive.

Having 12 months employment under my belt I felt more prepared and in control so I'm able to manage my workload better. The only way that I have been able to achieve this is by creating my own rule book. I get to my office at 7:15 and I have an alarm set for 5pm but I aim to have left work before that. If the alarm does go off I stop what I'm doing immediately and go home. The only thing that I take home is marking, no more than one set. No emails after 9pm and no work at all on a Friday night. I allow myself one revision to a lesson plan, and that's it. I eat a proper lunch which I make from scratch and it has to be eaten before I leave (I'm still working on this one, sometimes you'll see me in the car at five past five eating my sandwich because I haven't managed it). 

As an NQT you are going to be sprinting through each half term and then spending the holidays recovering, but this is not a sustainable way to live your life and you're unlikely to survive more than a year like that. It can lead you to feel a bit like the person I described at the start. If anything struck a chord with you, I strongly suggest that you make yourself that set of rules and actually stick to them. I'm a self-confessed work-aholic but my rule book has made sure that college is still important but there is now room for other things and the experiences I describe before, they're a very distant memory.