Is teaching really such a "great job"

any more?

The Senior Cat loved teaching. His greatest pleasure was being with children and helping them learn. He turned down multiple requests to be a "school inspector" and to take up senior administrative roles in the central office of the state's Education Department.  

"But you could easily have been the Director-General!" more than one person told him, including Ministers of Education on opposite sides of the political fence.

No, he did not want that. He was ambitious but not in any way which would have led him away from contact with children. Even when he was the school principal children would gravitate towards him, not away from him. They were, unless a miscreant, happy to talk to him and with him. 

There was more than one student who went on to a career in teaching because of his influence. Some of them have done well. Almost all of them are now retired but several ended their own careers as school principals. 

I was talking to one of these people yesterday. He retired at the end of the last school year and is about to set off on the "adventure of a life time", a trip around the coastline of the country. Does he miss school?

"I miss the kids," he told me. "I do not miss anything else. Teaching is not the same now."

I keep hearing that over and over again from other people in the teaching profession. I also hear it from people who have left the teaching profession. What started out as a "great job" has become a quagmire of forms, rules, regulations, diversity training, equity issues, behavioural issues, special needs, autism, social awareness and more. Teaching is apparently now a secondary issue for many, especially in low income areas. There you are the social worker and much more before you are the teacher. 

Both the person I was chatting with and I had been reading the newspaper articles recently being about teaching and teachers, about what makes a good teacher and how they might influence their students.

I must confess here to not caring very much for school. Most of the time I was bored. I doubt I recognised that at the time but my teachers did not inspire me. I went to school because I had to go to school. There are a few occasions which stand out but that is all.

I liked my last English teacher. We stayed in touch until she died. Her lessons were good but not outstanding. What was outstanding was, having discovered how much I loved reading, she provided me with a great deal of reading outside the curriculum. She encouraged me to think about further education even while accepting I was not very interested in school based learning. 

My last history teacher was the man who came in one morning and told us. "Close your books. I am going to tell you what is going to happen. You are living in history." Rhodesia was about to become Zimbabwe and he explained all this to us. Looking back I know the other students thought this was dull stuff. I was much more interested. 

I remember one other occasion when, during a Religious Knowledge (compulsory) class the teacher said something which suddenly made sense to me. It had nothing to do with religion as such but with language. I remember challenging him and he found something for me to read. It is unlikely anyone else even knew the word Aramaic but it was one of the little things that kept my interest in language and languages alive.  I met him again years later and he remembered my interest.  "Yes, I remember you well. You are the only student who ever questioned anything I said." Really? That was surely poor teaching?

I wonder now how my teachers would cope. I doubt they would do that well. The best of them, the history teacher, would probably maintain some discipline but they would not excite or encourage their students. 

With all that they were mostly nice people and they almost certainly had a belief they could teach the young. They may even have genuinely liked teaching. 

Did they inspire any student to go on and do great things? I do not know of any who taught me. I went to school with someone who became a politician but her father was a politician before her. I went to school with someone who became a world renowned neonatal cardiac surgeon but his parents were heavily involved in his educational ambitions. Almost everyone else I went to school with has been a good citizen and perhaps had a positive impact on those around them. Perhaps that has been something to do with the influence of our teachers on them. Perhaps that is also enough? 

I do not know. I was lucky enough to have parents, particularly a father, who believed in the importance of reading - and books ended up being the most important teacher of all.