@TeachInGlasgow@RogersHistory@enlighten_scot This is astonishing, even for someone who has worked in an extremely challenging school in England.
What is recruitment and retention like in Scotland at the moment?
It's not so much teachers; it's more crusading armchair amateurs, academics, near-journalists, and basically anyone who has never been near, let alone led, let alone led *successfully*, a challenging classroom.
I also notice lots of people who themselves had near-idyllic childhood experiences of schools, amazed that we need to have firm boundaries and consequences alongside the pastoral strategies.
Because they never inhabited a school that suffered high levels of disruption or violence, they struggle to imagine how any school could be like that.
But we cannot share their luxurious sentiments; children in chaotic environments cannot afford their piety.
There are other small aspects to this, but what @RogersHistory describes here is the core of building relationships with students. Good teachers I have observed had most, if not all, of these characteristics.
How do you establish these meaningful relationships with students everyone seems to say are the golden ticket in teaching?
Ermβ¦.. try teaching! seriously, just teach!
Passion for your subject radiates - children recognise it and hook into that passion.
Providing a safe learning space - you consistently provide an environment for learning, through fair and consistent boundaries, being assertive when you need to be.
You teach really good lessons, often - Lessons that spring out, stories that might draw laughter but stay in the memory, activities and resources that are genuinely cool, thinking about the learning experience.
The myth is that the relationships are more often than not forged through being overly nice or like another friend. Never saying no. Having banter. Caving into demands. Forfeiting actual teaching preferring to just have chats, trying to turn every moment into a therapy session that a child may not want or need. This is a myth.
Teaching is an amazing job and if itβs done well, an βover timeβ default side effect will be the relationships that outsiders tell you are the key to everything.
Good night!
@ChrisPa79064041@RogersHistory "...the accepted norms that are not normal at all in almost any other business in the country."
This. Sometimes we (in the teaching profession) are our own worst enemy.
@RogersHistory It is not: so some teachers will apply for roles with responsibility, even though they may not be ready, because it reduces teaching load
OR they burnout
OR they quit.
#teacherretentioncrisis
@RogersHistory The only rule I find a bit problematic is the first one. Are they supposed to stand behind their chairs until the whole class arrives?
Just have the starter activity ready for students as they arrive
@RogersHistory You always say the unsaid issues that NEED saying, and I respect it 100%!
A school where the majority of staff are 'surviving', day-to-day, indicates a serious problem with the culture of that school.