It's my second year, and I now feel sufficiently long in the tooth and grey in the beard, whilst retaining a modicum of youthful verve and vigour, to state emphatically that education is tough.
Not necessarily teaching. But certainly education.
In the year and half-term since I qualified from my PGCE there have been huge changes on both a micro and macro scale. A brief precis of such will find, nationally, the abandonment of KS3 levels (ultimately a positive though a little uncomfortable to begin with), new GCSEs, new A-Levels, new grading systems, and a new Education Secretary. Indeed, this year I find myself teaching old A-Level to Year 13, new A-Level to Year 12, old GCSE (but not quite, rather newish iGCSE) with Year 11 and new GCSEs with Year 10.
On a more local and personal level, this same time period has seen huge change in my school, both structurally and pedagogically on departmental and whole school levels. In English we have ripped up old KS3 schemes of learning and rewritten them to factor in much greater levels of challenge, integrated grammar, consideration of theories of sequencing and interleaving, and a depth and breadth of material to make English a subject of excitement, wonder and intellectual and creative worth. Simultaneously we have reconfigured our KS3 assessment frameworks and now, imminently ahead of their first implementation, look forward to discovering how they might contribute to driving stretch and challenge for our most able learners as well as in raising standards for all. I have been fortunate enough to have been granted some responsibility for contributing to this vital and thrilling work and have, albeit with a great deal of trepidation and justifiable wondering of 'why me', thrown myself into it whole-souled. Yet, undeniably the whole thing can often be just that little bit too all-encompassing.
Having just gone through my first experience of 'appraisal', it is a time of year wherein colleagues and I are turning to discussion with line managers about targets for the forthcoming year (lexical field of business unintended but mournfully accurate). Whatever my personal target may turn out to be, I shall certainly be maintaining an appraisal-free target of my own, the same that I set for myself at the beginning of my NQT year in September 2014:
'To continue to pursue my own interests, to make time for friends and family, and to continue enjoying life in the world outside school'
However, I am making it a part of my over-arching 'enjoyment' target to throw myself back into a more regular habit of reading something of my own choosing (and by that I mean something which is completely separate from my daily diet of education blogs, Twitter newsfeeds, A-Level, GCSE and KS3 texts for teaching, academic journal articles etc.). To this end, and to fully immerse myself in reading, and to give myself an extra motivation for doing so, I have recently taken huge pleasure from making weekend trips to Bath and Cheltenham for their Children's Literature Festival and Literature Festival respectively.
Indeed, my feelings along this line were only strengthened when hearing the eclectic mix of literary voices comprising Michael Morpurgo, Judith Kerr, Salman Rushdie and Melvynn Bragg at the Cheltenham Lit. Fest. several weeks later. For very affordable prices I was given insight into these writers' processes, passions and ways of thinking that were not only interesting and illuminating but also sparked ideas for how I might develop my teaching of writing. Michael Morpurgo's revelation that he does not in fact enjoy writing (!) but far prefers the stage of idea generation, what he calls 'Dreamtime', has led to a series of lessons in which I sought to instigate in my students a sense of child-like curiosity and immersion in story which I hoped would benefit their previously stilted and rather unimaginative creative work. More to come on the thinking behind this soon.
Overridingly, I felt my own appetite for reading greatly bolstered by the talks I attended. I was excited to delve into texts which I almost certainly would not have chosen for myself before the event. Indeed, I have subsequently bought Michael Morpurgo's 'The Eagle in the Snow' and Melvynn Bragg's 'Now is the Time' and am working frenziedly through my existing 'to-do' list of reading to get onto these new offerings. Perhaps more than even this, though, was the inspiration to write which I experienced during and after hearing such impassioned and genuinely interesting people. In terms of intrinsic motivation, I have been left in no doubt at all that the more we can expose students to 'real writers', the easier our job of encouraging them to write will be. This personal conviction was bolstered by looking around the various venues and seeing a considerable number of young teenagers held enraptured by the authors - the heaving queues for buying signed books afterwards added further testimony to this.
There is much publicity on social media platforms about the impossibility of achieving such an aim for many education professionals. Certainly, there is enough work to be done that, if one allowed it, the job could dominate every minute of the day. However, I subscribe fully to the argument that children deserve, nay need, teachers who are themselves interesting and well-informed people with interests which range beyond the confines of the classroom. How can we be teachers if we are not ourselves 'do-ers'?
As a teacher of English, I have enjoyed the whole school focus on literacy which we are continuing with this academic year. In particular, the renewed attention given to 'reading for pleasure' has been reinvigorating on a personal level. It is so easy, in an already crammed day, to let the daily reading schedule slip away. Even as an avid reader myself, more than once have I found myself foregoing the bedtime chapter in favour of getting an extra twenty minutes of sleep!
However, I am making it a part of my over-arching 'enjoyment' target to throw myself back into a more regular habit of reading something of my own choosing (and by that I mean something which is completely separate from my daily diet of education blogs, Twitter newsfeeds, A-Level, GCSE and KS3 texts for teaching, academic journal articles etc.). To this end, and to fully immerse myself in reading, and to give myself an extra motivation for doing so, I have recently taken huge pleasure from making weekend trips to Bath and Cheltenham for their Children's Literature Festival and Literature Festival respectively.
In the beautifully picturesque city of Bath it was a real treat to hear Joe Abercrombie, Phillip Reeve, Darren Shan and Charlie Higson (train delays sadly conspired against my booking to hear Jacqueline Wilson) enthusing about their new books and about reading and writing in general. It was wonderful to be sharing an audience space with so many school-age children who listened in wide-eyed wonder at these authors sharing extracts of their writing. On more than one occasion I found myself wishing that I had been able to bring along some of my own students - it is exactly this sort of direct experience, and soaking in of atmosphere, that could really generate the excitement about reading that is so important as a motivator.
Indeed, my feelings along this line were only strengthened when hearing the eclectic mix of literary voices comprising Michael Morpurgo, Judith Kerr, Salman Rushdie and Melvynn Bragg at the Cheltenham Lit. Fest. several weeks later. For very affordable prices I was given insight into these writers' processes, passions and ways of thinking that were not only interesting and illuminating but also sparked ideas for how I might develop my teaching of writing. Michael Morpurgo's revelation that he does not in fact enjoy writing (!) but far prefers the stage of idea generation, what he calls 'Dreamtime', has led to a series of lessons in which I sought to instigate in my students a sense of child-like curiosity and immersion in story which I hoped would benefit their previously stilted and rather unimaginative creative work. More to come on the thinking behind this soon. 
Overridingly, I felt my own appetite for reading greatly bolstered by the talks I attended. I was excited to delve into texts which I almost certainly would not have chosen for myself before the event. Indeed, I have subsequently bought Michael Morpurgo's 'The Eagle in the Snow' and Melvynn Bragg's 'Now is the Time' and am working frenziedly through my existing 'to-do' list of reading to get onto these new offerings. Perhaps more than even this, though, was the inspiration to write which I experienced during and after hearing such impassioned and genuinely interesting people. In terms of intrinsic motivation, I have been left in no doubt at all that the more we can expose students to 'real writers', the easier our job of encouraging them to write will be. This personal conviction was bolstered by looking around the various venues and seeing a considerable number of young teenagers held enraptured by the authors - the heaving queues for buying signed books afterwards added further testimony to this.
So what can we do? Clearly, well publicised and advertised literary festivals, such as those in Bath, Cheltenham and Edinburgh provide excellent opportunity for some young people to immerse themselves, for a time, in the joys of reading and writing. It is my feeling, though, that ultimately such a movement needs to be far more geographically wide-reaching. Yes, teachers can organise visits by authors in school, and this should be done more, but I can't help but feel that the pervasive problem of access to the arts is now also applicable to literature and books. Granted, anybody can go to a library, or even trawl the often underrated treasure troves that are charity shop book sections, but without the initial motivating flame to ignite such a desire, it is few underprivileged young people that will feel empowered or indeed driven to go to such places. It is my hope that the current spirit of fringe theatre, which is seeing non-traditional venues transformed into performance spaces all over the country, may rapidly spread to the world of literature so that, at the very least, every young person has the opportunity to be inspired by something so valued by so many, and so transformative in their impact - books,
