North Tyneside Local Association

Secret Teacher of North Tyneside

I’ll preface this by saying I work with the absolute best people. And part of what has made teaching so enjoyable is the unfaltering support and laughter with my colleagues. I have had some of the most rewarding moments of my life in both the class room and in the staff room. Before I started teaching I made a promise to myself and by default to the future children I would teach that once I hated being there I would go. As it wouldn’t be fair to either the students or myself.

This term has been a continuation of the relentless slog of back to back lessons as I teach 5 lesson days for 4 days in a row. Feeling like an overworked west end performer completing many matinees a day - Once one performance is done, I have not yet turned around and another audience approaches of which I have no time to contemplate my own thoughts and certainly not my own bodily functions. At the end of the day for many professions you could consider how to relax during your evening but I am met with the knowledge that after the 5 performances I have generated enough marking that could easily fill another 5 hours of my night if I wasn’t just to ‘call it’ at a certain time and remind myself, no one will die if a paragraph goes unticked one more night.

Topics I once loved teaching I feel detached from and part of this I believe is just sheer exhaustion at a machine gun approach to destroying a love for learning due to filling a child’s head full of content for an exam. No room for creative opinions as that may not be accepted on the mark scheme.

Money is certainly a deciding factor but so is time. Time not just to benefit my own mental health but to provide better quality lessons which doesn’t feel like a conveyor belt of me simply going through the motions. A repetition that feels as synonymous as SLT recycling learning techniques every 5 years. Day to day we are checking children are happy, healthy and that they learn more than they knew the day before which is tiring but it’s what we expect as teachers. However, social skills and mental health of children have been impacted by COVID and often there is no room in the day to tackle pastoral issues without sacrificing your lunch or access to a toilet, therefore the role of the teacher has evolved due to the lack of qualified non teaching professionals that could be placed in a school to address these issues.

We ‘do it for the kids’ and yes we are paid but we forget how important praise is for any human. We are inundated (rightly so) with how important praise and support is for students yet in the same place this is so natural between teaching staff and student it seems absent from management above, as if somehow once you become an adult and member of staff you never need to be told a sincere ‘well done’ or I’m glad you gave that a go. With regards to even further above (politicians) how am I capable of making a child feel value in themselves when I can’t feel it regarding my own profession? There are certainly sparkly teacher moments where you wouldn’t contemplate anything else. Cards from past students can temporarily make you feel more rooted in what is important and why we do this but this is easily forgotten when one pushes both their mental and physical health beyond the point of what would seem extreme in many jobs outside of the public sector. It feels like there should be more to life than saying “it will get easier" every day until the cycle starts again.

This is why if feel I need to take the heartbreaking decision to leave this profession. Good luck to all teachers!

If you would like to write a Secret Teacher article for us (anonymously) and enjoy a good rant. Happy, sad, annoyed, frustrated, funny, whatever you’re feeling about your life as an educator.

Send it to cmellor.nasuwt@gmail.com