Adam Robbins Education

I’ve just started my 20th year as a qualified teacher so I thought I would just reflect on that time. 

I know some people have taught for much longer but I thought it might give some context to the issues we currently face in recruitment and retention if I look back on the issues I’ve faced in that time. This blog started as personal reflections so it seems fitting. 

I never wanted to be a teacher.

On the 1st of July 2003 I turned up bright eyed and bushy tailed at Bognor Regis Community College ready to revolutionise education and turn this struggling school around. Yes I’ve never suffered from a lack of confidence, just a healthy dose of Dunning-Kruger.

I never wanted to be a teacher. Even facing graduation I wasn’t keen on being a teacher. 

However I needed something to do for a year while my then-girlfriend attended law school. They were letting you train to teach for free and it seemed like a good use of time. It would be a qualification that always has value and at the time the papers were criticising the state of education. I thought it would allow me to understand the issue and when I became a parent I would be able to criticise my child’s school from an angle of expertise. Look, I never said I was a good person!

Anyway during training the job grew on me. I liked the social aspect of it, the captive audience, the challenge and sharing my passion for my subjects. 

I only stayed in teaching for financial reasons. 

My school was put into special measures by October of my first year. It was a tough school to work in. Behaviour was poor and discipline was relationship based. If it wasn’t for the Golden Hello* and the Repayment of Teachers Loan** scheme I think I would have quit within the first few years. That and the key worker Homebuy*** scheme were vital to getting me through the door in the tough times.

Fast forward to 2017 and again my wage was the only reason I didn’t quit as a Head of Science. This is why teachers pay is so crucial. Feeling like I was a bit trapped I turned to twitter and books to try and find a way out. The rest is history I suppose. 

I was a terrible teacher for most of my career. 

judging from what I know now most of my lessons were rubbish early in my career. I spent hours trying to fit in with the ideas of engagement and edutainment. So many hours of lessons wasted. I can make myself feel better by saying I was not the only one, but still I feel like I should have been more critical and not so easily led. 

Groupthink is a real problem we need to fight against.

We need to embrace disagreement in our schools. Education does not have simple solutions and all choices have consequences. Education is a values based profession so people interpret disagreement as personal attacks. Leaders need to embrace disagreement as a way of avoiding teams becoming an echo chamber of their own ideas on social media we should resist the urge to label people who disagree with us as having dubious morals and instead ask them to explain their perspective.

The Separation of Tasks is everything.

The only way I have been able to keep my sanity is using the separation of tasks. Put simply the separation of tasks is an Adlerian psychology technique that forces you to analyse situations and identify the aspects of it you are actually in control of. There are many things that happen in education that you will not agree with. It can be helpful to step back at times of frustration and consider ‘what is my task?’. It might be you are responsible for your emotional response, or you might have to focus on making a choice you do not agree with work for your students the best it can. Other times you might decide your task is to fight the change. It’s up to you, but the separation of tasks stops you getting wound up by things not under your control.

Opportunity Cost is often ignored in education.

Everyone just tries to do more of every. Get teachers to plan better, assess more often and everything will get better. Some of the worst words in education are “it’s just a 5 min task”.

The more give out the more you get back.

I spent a large portion of my career keeping myself to myself and just doing what I thought was best. If left me prone to believing in ‘the next big thing’. It’s only when I started reaching out and sharing my ideas that I got valuable feedback and made connections with people that went on to become my good friends. I would encourage anyone who is finding it hard to see the wood for the trees to share their classroom experiences and try to make connections with like-minded teachers. 

Never Never, Never Always

I keep finding myself coming back to the following saying when reflecting on teaching “never never, never always”. When teaching biology I used the phrase to remind students that as soon as they thought in absolutes life would find a way to prove them wrong****. I think teaching is the same. There is always a situation where any approach can be deemed inappropriate. We need to be mindful of teachers and teacher educators that are unwilling to acknowledge that.

There are best bets though. Conversely we should also admit that some approaches are better than others. Possibly because they lead to more learning or more probably that they are easier to implement in a scalable fashion. Just because a teacher, or department can make something work does not mean it can be used across the system. I’m only really interested in things that can help all teachers.

I expect I’ll still be teaching in another 20 years. It’s a lot of fun and I enjoy the challenge it presents. I look forward to a follow up blog that I beam directly into your stasis pod to distract you while our AI overlords use your bioelectric field to charge their robot death squadrons.

* The Golden Hello was a fixed sum of money given to teacher after teaching for a few years.

** They paid back 10% of your loan balance each year so you were debt free by year 10.

*** The government bought a 25% stake in your first house or flat and then got it back when you sold it. This allowed me to buy a flat at 23 which seems impossible now.

****Only the Sith think in absolutes after all.