{"id":9058,"date":"2022-05-24T22:01:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-24T22:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/?p=9058"},"modified":"2022-05-24T22:01:09","modified_gmt":"2022-05-24T22:01:09","slug":"re-educated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2022\/05\/24\/re-educated\/","title":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udcda Re-educated"},"content":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve just finished reading Lucy Kellaway\u2019s excellent book<\/a> on how she went through fundamental life changes in her late 50s, leaving her decades-long job at the Financial Times<\/a> to become a secondary school teacher as well as separating from her husband, moving house and embracing grey hair.<\/p>\n

The chapters of the book give different slices through the author\u2019s life and experiences, kept fresh through the angles that they take. In one chapter late in the book we are given what I assume to be a \u2018typical\u2019 day in her life as a teacher, from when she wakes up until she\u2019s back in bed again.<\/p>\n

The book is life-affirming and relatable, with a few nuggets of wisdom in its pages:<\/p>\n

Most of them are getting the questions right. I used to think that asking kids things they already knew was pointless. But it\u2019s not: it puts them in a good mood for learning new things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Kellaway reflects on her own past: her parents and her education, as well as the way in which she brought up her own children. I found myself nodding in recognition to her experiences both as a parent:<\/p>\n

Subsequently I discovered that size of house cuts both ways. It may have kept us safe from the world outside, but it also kept us safe from each other. As the children grew older and became teenagers an average evening at number 52 would not find the family amiably playing Scrabble or even gathering passively around the TV to watch Friends. After a quick supper cooked by me \u2013 soggy leek-and-bacon pasta or chicken nuggets and broccoli \u2013 we dispersed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…and as someone who wants to focus on specialising and refining their performance in their current job, not focusing on promotion:<\/p>\n

My position, and that of about two-thirds of the Now Teachers, is quite different. We have no desire to advance above the bottom rung of the ladder that we are now squarely standing on. We own our own property and don\u2019t need to prove ourselves in the same way she does. We don\u2019t want to be promoted, but only want to be responsible for our own classes and for becoming better at what we do. That feels quite enough. This resistance to promotion makes us both happier and harder to manage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the best parts are about her experiences as a teacher, and what she has come to learn \u2014 and to question \u2014 over the past few years:<\/p>\n

For all its strictness, the school does give some latitude to teachers on how they teach. Yet this is provisional, and puts the onus on me. I need to prove that I can get good results \u2013 and I have absolutely no idea if I can. Is it possible to teach both the world and the syllabus? If not, is there a trade-off? If children get one grade lower because they have spent a lot of time thinking about broader things, how much does it matter?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I enjoy planning lessons but it strikes me as a shocking waste of time. Why aren\u2019t there national lesson plans designed by the best teachers in the country and updated every year? I spend the next 20 minutes hastily scrabbling around for material and putting together a slap-dash PowerPoint.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two years later, I have a clearer idea of what it is I\u2019m trying to do. Changing lives turns out not to be about making instant transformations \u2013 it is about hard slog and tiny, incremental improvements. This realisation has changed my own life \u2013 or at least how I teach, and the sort of teacher I want to be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since that day the penny has dropped: the best way of helping Alicia is not to try to make economics a fun show, it is to get her to pass her exam. If it is a teacher\u2019s job to open doors, those doors, under the present regime, are GCSEs. When I started teaching, I thought exams were a necessary evil. I still think that. I hate the way schools talk of them as if they are the purpose of education, when in fact they are merely (flawed) evidence that you\u2019ve acquired some. I despised the government\u2019s response to Covid in schools, where it prioritised the year groups taking exams, as if the education of the other years somehow didn\u2019t matter. I despair at the way teachers spend as much time teaching exam technique as the subject itself. Yet despite this I, too, am teaching the exam first and economics second.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recommended.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve just finished reading Lucy Kellaway\u2019s excellent book on how she went through fundamental life changes in her late 50s, leaving her decades-long job at the Financial Times to become a secondary school teacher as well as separating from her husband, moving house and embracing grey hair. The chapters of the book give different slices […]<\/div>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9058","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"h-entry","9":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4130,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2018\/05\/20\/weeknote-18-gasps\/","url_meta":{"origin":9058,"position":0},"title":"Weeknote #18 \u2014 Gasps","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"20 May 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The past couple of weeks have been so busy \u2014 this week reaching a \u2018having difficulty breathing\u2019-level of busyness \u2014 with regular gasps when remembering things I need to or have committed to do. Despite having a good ubiquitous capture tool and a reasonably solid GTD-esque reminder system I still\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Weeknotes"","block_context":{"text":"Weeknotes","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/weeknotes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/4778CF14-C7EF-4C03-902E-C4194E1A6EB4.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/4778CF14-C7EF-4C03-902E-C4194E1A6EB4.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/4778CF14-C7EF-4C03-902E-C4194E1A6EB4.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/4778CF14-C7EF-4C03-902E-C4194E1A6EB4.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/4778CF14-C7EF-4C03-902E-C4194E1A6EB4.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/4778CF14-C7EF-4C03-902E-C4194E1A6EB4.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1016,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2017\/06\/08\/mary-maclane\/","url_meta":{"origin":9058,"position":1},"title":"Mary MacLane","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"8 June 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I stumbled across Mary MacLane's first book on the Melville House Publishing website where it features as part of their Neversink Library series. Instead of picking that up, I discovered Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader and bought it with the hope that it would give me all three of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Image-08-06-2017-07-58.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3492,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2017\/09\/09\/elephant-complex-travels-in-sri-lanka\/","url_meta":{"origin":9058,"position":2},"title":"Elephant Complex: Travels in Sri Lanka","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"9 September 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Read this book before and during my holiday in Sri Lanka. Gives an excellent overview of the country and its history which reveals itself to the reader gradually, culminating in an account of the end of the civil war. The chapters are sequenced and themed in a general anti-clockwise journey\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/29114247.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11405,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2024\/11\/23\/11405\/","url_meta":{"origin":9058,"position":3},"title":"\ud83d\udcda Finished reading My Old\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"23 November 2024","format":"status","excerpt":"\ud83d\udcda Finished reading My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall by John Major. A book on this topic is a difficult concept, trying to convey the essence of acts that in many cases can\u2019t be seen on film or heard on audio recordings. The photos and illustrations in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"\u201c One day, at around the age of nine, I remember rushing home for tea and, in my hurry, throwing open the kitchen door. My father, who was fitting a lightbulb, fell from the stool he was standing on and cracked his head on the tiled floor. Clearly dazed, he was taken off to bed. Although I did not know it at the time, his sight had been fading for many months, as cataracts dimmed his vision; but as it worsened, I was certain that his failing sight was as a direct result of my childhood exuberance. 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Not good.","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9058"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9060,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9058\/revisions\/9060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}