Utterly Uncontroversial

So my long silence comes with a good excuse and a bad excuse. The good excuse is that I have been getting lots of casual teaching work (hooray!). The bad excuse is I still need to talk to the Department of Education about what level of detail is appropriate to put on the blog, and phone calls make me sad.

Luckily for all my faithful readers, I have come up with a solution. Today’s post is all the things I love about casual teaching, a list that will be so pleasant and appreciative that nobody could possibly object to it.

Kirk and McCoy approve this list

Reasons to love casual teaching

I get to see the students in different contexts.

So this kid is disruptive in maths but a little angel in science – why? Is it the classroom, the subject, the other kids? By picking up on these patterns I become better at managing student behaviour.

I get to teach different subjects.

Teaching out of your subject area is a humbling experience. In the past month I’ve taken classes in Science, Maths, English, PDHPE, Dance, Engineering Studies, Design & Technology, Music and History. Even with well prepared lessons, I often quickly find myself out of my depth. It’s really increased my respect for the expertise of my fellow teachers in their subject areas.

I get to meet more of my colleagues.

Lots of subjects means lots of staffrooms. The teachers I’ve worked with have been funny, friendly and above all, supportive. If I had gone straight into a permanent job I would have missed out on making connections across the whole school.

My afternoon is my own.

As a brand new teacher it’s nice to be able to practice improving my behaviour management without also being up until midnight writing lessons. During my afternoons I have time to relax, exercise, reflect on my day, keep on top of household chores and generally look after myself. Of course just because I have time to do these (sensible, adult) things doesn’t mean I’m actually do them… cat videos, anyone?

All in all I’m pretty happy right now. Hopefully the Department will be fine with my plans for this blog and I’ll be able to get into some more specific anecdotes/reflections, but the bottom line is that teaching suits me and I’m really, really glad.