Naturally, I'm very used to the old L plates. At 22, I've been wearing them for 6 years. On and off.
Now I'm a postgraduate student at the University of Manchester however, I'm wearing a completely different kind of L plate - I'm learning to be a teacher, so I'm officially a "student teacher".
It is true that the most intelligent people don't necessarily get the hang of driving all too quickly. (I know a lot of smart people who failed their driving tests several times). The same is true of teaching. Just because you know a lot of facts and figures, and can understand complex physical theories quicker than other people can read them, doesn't automatically make you a brilliant teacher.
On our interview day, Martin told us that the University finds that the students with the best degrees are the ones who struggle on our course the most. This is because they don't understand the concept of not being able to understand. How can they empathise with low ability students if they've never felt like that themselves? How can they translate something in their head into another form of understanding, if they always tend to understand everything the first time round?
On this course, I have the advantage of not being super smart. I know what it's like to be sitting there in a classroom thinking - er, what?! Mainly when it came to maths. (I was in the high ability set, but at the lower end of it, so the others generally understood things a lot faster. I would bring up the rear).
These experiences of learning to drive *sigh*, and of primary school maths lessons *eek* have set some firm understanding in my head of what it feels like to not quite grasp something. This gives me greater patience with a child, and greater empathy when it comes to their frustration and nervousness in the learning environment.
The method of translating something in your head into a new and different way of understanding or explaining it? This is one of the first things we learnt about on our course. It's called Pedagogy. It's a fancy word, but it mainly means this method of translating. You probably know that people's brains work in different ways - some literally see a word written in their mind, some might see a picture of it, some might hear the sound it makes, etc. But for teachers, this idea is GOLD DUST. We have to plan our lessons taking into account ALL the children in the class, all their different little brains, all their complex little minds, and think about how it might be easier for different groups to understand something when it's put in a slightly different way. Can we act this out? Can we write it down? Can we talk about it? Draw pictures of it? Bring it into the classroom and smell it? The possibilities are endless!
- When we draw a picture of it - Dermot* might think - WOW! I really get this!
- When we bring it in and touch it and smell it, Julie* might think - Oh, NOW I know what she means.
- When we start to act it out, Jeremy* might think, OH yeah, I see now.
- And when we simply write it down, Carl* (the class G&T**) might think, Well I got it the first time, but it was definitely fun getting to do the other stuff.
*I made these names up.
**Stands for Gifted and Talented, NOT Gin and Tonic.
You see, we might have to put it in half a dozen different contexts, and use a dozen different synonyms, but (hopefully), they'll all get there in the end - in their own way, in their own time.
Another thing I've learnt this week? Teaching is as much about learning as it is about teaching. Continual Development - that's what I'm aiming for. I'll never know everything there is to know about children and about teaching. Children are all so different, and so complex. I'm sure there will be cases when they'll still stun and baffle me when I'm 65. But that's why I love this job so much. Days can be similar, but they are never the same!
My plan is: Wear my L plates, loud and proud, throughout my course this year, throughout my first year of teaching and throughout my career. I never confess to knowing everything, but I'll always give it my best shot. This is all I want from my pupils - not to get everything right, but to try their best.
It's a good motto to live by, don't you think?
