Lessons from an Okay Teacher

If you don’t know who Gradgrind is/was, he’s an educationalist in one of Charles Dickens’ novels who thinks the only way to educate children is to get them to recite fact after fact.  He’s famous for being the very antithesis of what a teacher should be. I have been a primary school teacher for the majority of my career but have never been a Gradgrind, until I started thinking a bit more.  The duties expected of teachers has changed over the past  120 years because of changes in the pedagogical approach that was fashionable at the time.  Pedagogy is a wide and developing ‘science’ and one that attracts criticism as well as praise depending upon the political persuasion of the said commentators. We all know why state-wide education was introduced back in the days of the world being devoid of colour and only available in black and white.  Incidentally, should you tell students of a younger age that colour was only invented in the 1950’s, some will actually take you seriously.  Do n

  These are the notes of someone who has been an okay teacher for thirty years.  They may be odd.  They may be illuminating.  They may be boring.  They may be, well, okay.  Why an okay teacher?  Why not a great teacher or a good teacher?  What’s so wrong with calling yourself that? Well, I’m with the late, great Graham Taylor, a famous English football manager.  He said this about his job but I feel it is also very pertinent about your job as a teacher.  He said “In this job you get nice things said about you and bad things said about you.  The trick is not to spend any longer thinking about one than the other. In the end they are both bollocks.” He’s right.  I’ve been a good teacher and a bit of a crap one sometimes in my 30 year career.  They even out to being an okay teacher.  Of course, I would like that to be a positive kind of okay, like “Yeah, he’s okay!” rather than a negative one like “Well, I suppose he was okay, I guess.”  I’ll take being okay.  I am aware that this isn’t ex