DISCLAIMER: every single anecdote included in this blog post is real; every word, every event, every discussion herein reported. It has happened. Just because you’ve not witnessed it personally, it doesn’t mean it’s poppycock.

 

The Inner Voice – part 1

**On the 7^th March 2018, at around 16:10, I was driving back home from the south to the north of England, when I got a phone call.

‘Ele’, said the voice at the other end of the line, ‘it’s Jane, from the MAT’. Two minutes later, I pulled over in the emergency lane, hugged the steering wheel, and sobbed.

Rewind

September 2017 began pretty much with me sat in a university laboratory, together with nineteen trainee science teachers (one small chunk of a cohort of about 120); my speciality was chemistry (it’s not, not really, I’m a biology fiend, but hey ho). Within the first of three weeks in university, we were told that the course had the following expectations of us:

• That we should be ‘outstanding’ practitioners by the end of the academic year
• That we should attend every university session and stay for as long as required
• That we should comply with all requests

Incidentally, within that very same first week, a former student had come to visit one of the science tutors, and I happened to be outside the tutor’s office. So, the former student and I had got talking about how they had dropped out of their PGCE the previous March, were now busy with a Masters degree, had reclaimed their life back, and were happier than ever.

That got me a bit worried, I’ll admit, but resilience is quite the mystery and we can’t just all be the same, right?

In any case, by the end of week three, there were Dewey, Rousseau, Freire, Vygotsky, the Goldilocks Principle, Bloom’s Taxonomy, Maslow, the learning pyramid, learning styles, starters, plenaries, differentiation, G&T, EAL, SEND, wider professional responsibilities, the teacher persona, teacher voice, teacher identity, discovery learning…

Further rewind

One thing about me that might help make sense of other things in this blog post:

I am on the spectrum (diagnosed as an adult, there was no such thing as autism in the early 80s, not in the Homeland anyway: it was called being a weirdo). This makes me a bit peculiar in some ways; for example:

– I need to know people’s full names; I don’t mind calling them by their preferred name, but I need to know their full name. When people don’t want to tell me their full name it gets a bit awkward;

– I don’t like noise; noise can get very loud very quickly, even small noise (I’m in the wrong job, right?) so I use headphones even when I don’t need them;

– I like routines, particularly where time is concerned; like, I need to start walking the dogs just before 10 am or I get panicky;

– I’m not very good with adults; I mean, I can handle myself, I’ve done that for a few decades now, and I can do all the polite things, but it’s quite exhausting. I need to be alone a lot.

Moving forward

Who gives a shit, right? I hear you, bear with.

During my secondary PGCE I did two placements: my first was in a SEND school, my review said I was outstanding or good, with one requires improvement in talking to parents. Believe it or not, I never had to make one of those phone calls home, and I always gave my children prizes for great work or great behaviour. Before leaving them at Christmas, I gave all of them cosy socks, and we hugged and cried together; one of the children, a year 9 boy, wore the socks every single day after. My heart swells at the thought!

My second placement was in the mainstream secondary comp right next door (for a while, us trainees from the same programme would call it ‘meanstream’). Small, barely 700 children on roll, judged ‘Good’ (don’t believe the hype) after years of ‘Requires improvement’ (believe the hype).

My mentor said that they would treat me as if that was my first placement because SEND schools are not ‘real teaching’. Erm, ok. I disagreed (true, some schools for SEMH children can follow a so-called ‘creative curriculum’, but not the one where I’d been; that had GCSEs and everything!) but something at the back of my head told me that I wasn’t allowed to disagree. Instead, I taught. Well, I tried to. It didn’t work out. This is some of the feedback I’ve received from my mentor across the weeks under their care:

• Too much teacher talk
• The lesson lacked pace and invited poor behaviour because of slower pace
• You are giving the pupils too much information, you need to allow them to work it out for themselves

This was pretty much all the feedback I would receive, on a loop. On the plus side, I was once told that I had good subject knowledge (something biology related, I think).

I would cry my way into school, I would cry my way out of school; one day I cried my way during the best part of a year 9 lesson. My mentor never had time for me, or they didn’t wish to make time, perhaps; in all fairness, I’ve always felt they were far too busy to be a mentor: with a full timetable plus Head of Year, they were often overwhelmed with paperwork. I would get my feedback about a week later, and by that time it would be a bit redundant.

When April came around, after I had pleaded with university to help and no help had come, some sort of remediation was put in place, but it was too late. I hated teaching, I hated working with children, I wanted none of it. When I put in a complaint with university for pretty much leaving me to my own devices, I was told the following: sometimes, watching a trainee is like watching a car crash happen; you feel compelled to watch even though there’s nothing you can do to help. To this, my astonished voice had replied that, sure, I get it; but would you not call an ambulance, at the very least? I was met with silence.

One of the things that my mentor never did was get to know me. They really did not seem interested in any of that. When I used to cry they would say ‘it only gets worse once you have your classes’ or ‘you’re overthinking things’; I guess they thought those were meant to be helpful comments, but they weren’t really, not one bit. My hard work, my hard earned confidence, was reduced to rubble.

It was May 2018, and I was done. My Inner Voice, what I had left of it, was lost.

Coming soon: The Inner Voice – Part 2, on rebirth and finding kindness in unexpected places.