I have just completed my 20th year of teaching. I have found the work exhilarating, uplifting and fulfilling at times as well as frustrating, disappointing and isolating on occasion. Recently I have reflected on how these vacillating emotions and experiences are the product of where I have worked, the regimes I have worked under, of my own doing and partially as a consequence of forces beyond the control of schools through the exertions and interference of politics.
Teaching in different settings has afforded me unique intellectual and professional challenges. I feel I have continually benefitted from meeting, working with and learning from people of varying experience, differing outlooks on the purpose of education and diverse attitudes to teaching methodology. I have always sought the perspectives of others on a range of matters and used them in combination with research to make better decisions. Perspectives have also helped me to make sense of the complex intersection of personal investment and collective agency in teaching.
I have extended this search for perspective online and try to locate those who offer me insight and new ways to think about existing ideas and things I wish to understand better, such as education reform as business strategy, the growing concern around technological surveillance in schooling and the reconfiguration of teacher identity, professionalism and wellbeing in the face of altering power discourses. I have found such people and been encouraged by their intelligent and courageous tussles with their truths or interests. I want to share some of these people’s contemplations and provocations they offered in 2017 and hope you find them as interesting as I do.
Tomaz Lasic rarely blogs, but when he does, it is worth every minute of your time. In So You Want To Teach? he thoughtfully and thoroughly explores what someone who is thinking about teaching as a career might want to consider. Teaching is hard work and requires us to be at our most human, not merely operating in a metronomic fashion, striving for precision when it’s almost impossible to homogenise the heterogeneous – students, and schools. Tomaz nudged me (and probably anyone who read the piece) to remember that questions of utility and purpose of education are as important as the preoccupation with content and method. We have a responsibility to think critically and constructively about both, and do both. This isn’t an easy project but is something we need to be prepared to do. The dialogue and decisions about what could be, needs to be led by and owned by the profession rather than influenced by those who commentate from a distance and wilfully construct visions of the future which might cause apprehension on one hand or premature and blind acceptance of what might teleport us there with expediency.
The affective labour created by the cacophony of futurist rhetoric propelled by spurious and worrisome data and slick wordsmithery, can throw us into confusion about what to do next, when to do it and with what resources. While the effect will likely vary from person-to-person and school-to-school, the sense of needing to measure up and be prepared seems hard to avoid, especially when those with influence call us to care more and do more to meet educational horizons with verve and excitement rather than proceeding with caution. Two pieces that really resonated with me about this were Benjamin Doxtdator’s skilful tackling of the popular futurist trope of educating our children for ‘jobs that don’t exist yet’ and the tale of 60 years of construction beyond schooling and it’s gradual infiltration into our sphere by those who stand to profit from uncertainty. In the same way Naomi Barnes offered us 20 Thoughts on Automating Education. This short and powerful piece steps us through the converging worlds of monetising uncertainty, the seductive narrative built around the future skills market, technological disintermediation of schooling and how democratic participation in decisions about what education can be for are under threat from automation and AI.
With all these scenario’s playing out, there is a considerable amount for teachers to process when we broach the issue of burgeoning change, workload and accountability and the effect on our mental health. What passes as acceptable and reasonable, and who speaks into the decisions about how to address it (locally and systemically) is something we should feel obligated to prioritise. We have to contend with the competing priorities of policy after policy and the work that accrues as a result. Teachers care a great deal about their work and we are very effective at taking care of what we care about or compelled to care about, except perhaps ourselves. Mark Johnson provided an important reminder of why taking a slow and steady approach to work can bring repair and balance in this honest and touching account.
On a similar note Tom Rogers offered his heart-rending story about the battle with his mental health when blogging for the TES. In it we could feel the visceral outpouring of accumulated anxiety, guilt and pressure which had silently eroded his confidence and self-care. Consequently Tom initiated a beautiful and powerful professional service to many by crowd-sourcing Twitter support and counselling for those suffering in their own way. Hundreds of people generously volunteered their time and experience in this move to connect people who might ordinarily feel apprehensive or unable to share their troubles with others with those who would seek to show solidarity and care. You can see the start of it here. This gave me a sense of optimism that teachers and school leaders stand side-by-side for each other irrespective of how far or near they are geographically, institutionally and ideologically.
Finally, Sherri Spelic reminded me that teachers have tremendous agency waiting to happen. Despite feeling like we are at the nadir of the system, buried under a policy scrapheap, Sherri urges us to remember, in her beautiful and resonant “Letting Go Of Schooling To Think About Education”, that we are close to the action unlike those who tighten the clasp of precision-seeking policy that reduces our professionalism to merely the calculable and accountable. This blog was neatly timed with the exciting arrival of Flip the System UK: A Teachers Manifesto. In here we find echoes of Sherri’s sentiments that there are powerful voices to be heard and stories to be shared about how to do education differently to place the emphasis on making good educational decisions in the hands of those with direct experience.
Perspectives and accounts of experience are a rich source of information about what education is, feels like, can be and should be. The articulation of them is a barometer of trust in that when matched with a serious intent to listen, pay attention, engage and not judge them, we value people and can enrich dialogue about how to make teaching fulfilling, learning worthwhile and the purpose ethical and equitable.