By Christobel Gondwe
Christobel studied Biomechanical Engineering to PhD level. Working as a graduate teaching assistant at university ignited her desire to teach, and in 2018 she began her PGCE in secondary maths with United Teaching, the school-led teacher training programme for United Learning–the UK’s largest multi-academy trust.
I chose to teach because, in retrospect, the most influential people in my life were my parents and my maths teacher. They were fundamental in developing me, both as a young woman and as an academic. Most importantly, it was their care for me and belief in my success that fueled me in striving to achieve my potential.
Having studied Biomechanical Engineering to PhD level, I felt that it was right for me to give back to education all that it had given to me.
My training year was full of surprises, challenges and exceptionally rewarding experiences. I found the workload quite tough to begin with, particularly time management. It was quite demanding trying to juggle lesson planning and keeping on top of my training portfolio paperwork.
However, I realised that this was due to my perfectionist tendencies; perpetually trying to produce perfect slides and presentations for every single lesson — all planned to the nth degree.
In the sixth week of my first half-term I had a light-bulb moment.
The passion I have for teaching often meant that I felt guilty delivering a lesson that I hadn’t poured my all into, particularly in terms of how my presentations looked.
However, in the sixth week of my first half term I had a light-bulb moment: it is not perfect resources that make good lessons; it is good pedagogy, delivery and questioning. From this point, I was able to focus on my questioning and styles of delivery, rather than the mere aesthetics of my lesson slides.
My mentor always provided me with constructive feedback on my lessons, which allowed me to make the good parts of my teaching second nature, so that I could focus on the areas I needed to develop.
In hindsight I think that, while it is of course important to work hard during your training year, it is equally as important to work smartly and efficiently. Once I got into my flow of working smarter, I found my planning time reduced considerably, and consequentially I became more confident in my ability to teach.
The support from my department made me feel like I was working in a team of friends.
My first placement was at Manchester Academy, an inner-city school. It involved exposure to various challenges, but the support from my department made me feel like I was working in a team of friends. My colleagues’ seemingly endless time for me allowed me to flourish and develop when I most needed it.
Manchester Academy provided an open arena for me to develop my pedagogy skills as I worked with highly effective and experienced teachers, whilst also exploring different methods to deliver this good pedagogy to a challenging cohort.
The warmth and teamwork at the school were noticeable from the start, and are some of the main factors that helped me complete my training year successfully.
Also important was building good relationships, empathy and trust with the students. This enabled me to develop strong behaviour management skills and make a real impact on my pupils’ progress and their attitudes to learning.
It almost felt like the pupils had transformed overnight!
Upon returning to school from the Christmas holidays, my teaching performance and ability had notably improved. It almost felt like the pupils had transformed overnight! They were now following my routines and stepping up to my expectations, without me having to remind them to do so.
I also found that it was easier to continue developing constructive relationships with my pupils, which in turn allowed me to make the positive impact to their learning that I really wanted to achieve.
As time went on, teaching preparation felt less like a chore and more like lessons, questions, discussions and classes that I was looking forward to teaching.
The watershed moment for me was when one of my pupils gave me a thank-you card that said: ‘I used to really struggle in maths, in fact I more than hated it. But I now find it OK, and actually enjoy the subject and that is all because of you. Thank you’. This gave me confidence in my teaching ability and demonstrated to me that teaching is so much more than just planting knowledge in students’ memories.
Always remember that you can learn from others and don’t hesitate to ask for help.
The main thing to anticipate in the teacher training year — I would say — is the steep learning curve. Although I came from an academic background and had just submitted my PhD in a mathematics discipline, I still found that there were gaps in my subject knowledge at GCSE and A level.
Even more challenging was learning how to select, dissect and deliver information so that my pupils could understand and learn it. I had to expect to and be prepared to struggle and have difficult days — which is part and parcel of the significant workload of being a teacher.
Therefore, regardless of how confident you are in your ability, always remember that you can learn from others, and don’t hesitate to ask for help.
Indeed, I found great benefit in the close friendships I developed with my training cohort, where I could share success stories and discuss solutions to the more difficult situations, all of which were paramount to surviving and making the most of the training year both for me and my pupils.
A wise leader in education once said to me during a CPD session: ‘The work and time you put in today is an investment for tomorrow’.
In essence, if you plan and work hard in advance, you will have time to focus on the most important stuff tomorrow: delivering and teaching fantastic lessons. After all, the phrase ‘every day is a school day’ is just as applicable to teachers as the students.
