This is an open letter to anyone hurtling towards the first half term of their teaching career who has gotten lost amongst that NQT label. This is a post on the tips I wish I was given, the advice I wish I had taken and the emails I wish I had ignored.
First of all, let me remind you that you are new. Yes, that's what the capital N at the beginning of your vast NQT induction schedule stands for, but lets not forget you are a new colleague, employee, team member sometimes even a new house mate. You are qualified to teach but you are not qualified to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the photocopying codes, the history of the Patterson family nor the ins and outs of the staffroom politics and why that giraffe mug should be locked in a cabinet so that the next unsuspecting person isn't the subject of a lengthy all staff email about it's whereabouts. Secondly, let me also remind you that any school worth its weight in green pens won't expect you to be an expert in any of these areas and will have someone to support you in your quest to knowing why it is vital little Joe Patterson is sat nowhere near his completely-different-surname ex-stepbrother.
Friends will be the backbone of your time in your new job. They will be your sounding (swearing) board, your last minute panic emails about exactly which target grade is going on the report and is there enough time to go and change them, your own personal branch of Boots when you forget it is staff photo day and you look like you have spent the weekend with Miley Cyrus and most importantly those who are primed and ready to quash any Christmas party rumours involving you and an unidentified Governor. The beauty of these friendships is that they will end up lasting a lifetime as you will have been caught by a child swearing together, both have staff photos on the website that convince you to wear more/less bronzer and drink more/less coffee and it will definitely be said friend who convinced you to sing 'Wrecking Ball' at the Christmas party despite the audience of Governors. And all that worry about target grades...no one noticed anyway.
The thing I noticed the most about being an NQT was my increased use of the word 'too'. I was too tired, had too much marking, spent too much time teaching something that didn't appear on the test, had too many students in my bottom set year 8 group and had too much left of the syllabus to cover with my GCSE class. What I failed to use my new favourite word for was anything positive. Some of my students made too much progress; so much so that I had a sea of happy parents at parents evening, my lessons with year 7 were too engaging in that their behaviour in Maths was a shining example of how they could behave and the school had too many students asking their tutors to provide the same tutor time activities I did. I like to think that too little and too much eventually balances out to be enough and I am sure you are already doing more than enough on a daily basis.
Getting that balance right is hard to do when the simplest task takes longer than expected and you feel guilty for falling foul of that advice that a lesson that takes longer to plan than teach is a waste of your valuable time. To-do lists expand and there is always someone you've never heard of emailing asking for feedback on a student you are 99.9% certain you don't teach (and that 0.1% of you is hoping it isn't Joe Patterson under his fifth alias of the year). I once received an 'urgent' email. I knew this was urgent because the red exclamation mark was blinking at me from the corner of the address bar. I dismissed said email as I welcomed my year 10s into the room. In fact it came to the end of the week and the dismissed email sunk into the depths of my inbox. It was many, many weeks later that I then found said (unanswered) email. When I left my previous job several years later and attempted to fish out any important emails before my account was deleted the very same email was still there, and there it remained now plunged into some sort of email graveyard in. And no, I did not leave with a P45 due to an unanswered email.
So if I could do it all again would I do anything differently? I would spend more time with my family and friends. I know this is easier said than done and I totally emphasis that there will be people now who pop into your head that you can't imagine doing anything except preparing five outstanding lessons every day as they glide around the corridors while us mere mortals crawl from classroom to coffee-ing-hole. I also say this as during this year some life changing events took place in my personal life and I truly feel I often placed more importance on cutting out 32 sets of nth term card sorts than taking stock and looking beyond school. It is so very easy to do and those irrational pangs of guilt you feel accepting that 9Y4 will be left in charge of cutting out your carefully created resource won't go away completely but do you really need to laminate those level ladders tonight?
As a final plea to all you super-talented, down-right-bloody-amazing NQTs, I urge you this: take up running, treat yourself to something every pay day, book a week/weekend/day away at October half term, put your pyjamas on at 4pm on a Friday, get that early night, have that extra Margarita during happy hour and above all remember sometimes you are the pigeon, sometimes you are the statue.
First of all, let me remind you that you are new. Yes, that's what the capital N at the beginning of your vast NQT induction schedule stands for, but lets not forget you are a new colleague, employee, team member sometimes even a new house mate. You are qualified to teach but you are not qualified to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the photocopying codes, the history of the Patterson family nor the ins and outs of the staffroom politics and why that giraffe mug should be locked in a cabinet so that the next unsuspecting person isn't the subject of a lengthy all staff email about it's whereabouts. Secondly, let me also remind you that any school worth its weight in green pens won't expect you to be an expert in any of these areas and will have someone to support you in your quest to knowing why it is vital little Joe Patterson is sat nowhere near his completely-different-surname ex-stepbrother.
Friends will be the backbone of your time in your new job. They will be your sounding (swearing) board, your last minute panic emails about exactly which target grade is going on the report and is there enough time to go and change them, your own personal branch of Boots when you forget it is staff photo day and you look like you have spent the weekend with Miley Cyrus and most importantly those who are primed and ready to quash any Christmas party rumours involving you and an unidentified Governor. The beauty of these friendships is that they will end up lasting a lifetime as you will have been caught by a child swearing together, both have staff photos on the website that convince you to wear more/less bronzer and drink more/less coffee and it will definitely be said friend who convinced you to sing 'Wrecking Ball' at the Christmas party despite the audience of Governors. And all that worry about target grades...no one noticed anyway.
The thing I noticed the most about being an NQT was my increased use of the word 'too'. I was too tired, had too much marking, spent too much time teaching something that didn't appear on the test, had too many students in my bottom set year 8 group and had too much left of the syllabus to cover with my GCSE class. What I failed to use my new favourite word for was anything positive. Some of my students made too much progress; so much so that I had a sea of happy parents at parents evening, my lessons with year 7 were too engaging in that their behaviour in Maths was a shining example of how they could behave and the school had too many students asking their tutors to provide the same tutor time activities I did. I like to think that too little and too much eventually balances out to be enough and I am sure you are already doing more than enough on a daily basis.
Getting that balance right is hard to do when the simplest task takes longer than expected and you feel guilty for falling foul of that advice that a lesson that takes longer to plan than teach is a waste of your valuable time. To-do lists expand and there is always someone you've never heard of emailing asking for feedback on a student you are 99.9% certain you don't teach (and that 0.1% of you is hoping it isn't Joe Patterson under his fifth alias of the year). I once received an 'urgent' email. I knew this was urgent because the red exclamation mark was blinking at me from the corner of the address bar. I dismissed said email as I welcomed my year 10s into the room. In fact it came to the end of the week and the dismissed email sunk into the depths of my inbox. It was many, many weeks later that I then found said (unanswered) email. When I left my previous job several years later and attempted to fish out any important emails before my account was deleted the very same email was still there, and there it remained now plunged into some sort of email graveyard in. And no, I did not leave with a P45 due to an unanswered email.
So if I could do it all again would I do anything differently? I would spend more time with my family and friends. I know this is easier said than done and I totally emphasis that there will be people now who pop into your head that you can't imagine doing anything except preparing five outstanding lessons every day as they glide around the corridors while us mere mortals crawl from classroom to coffee-ing-hole. I also say this as during this year some life changing events took place in my personal life and I truly feel I often placed more importance on cutting out 32 sets of nth term card sorts than taking stock and looking beyond school. It is so very easy to do and those irrational pangs of guilt you feel accepting that 9Y4 will be left in charge of cutting out your carefully created resource won't go away completely but do you really need to laminate those level ladders tonight?
As a final plea to all you super-talented, down-right-bloody-amazing NQTs, I urge you this: take up running, treat yourself to something every pay day, book a week/weekend/day away at October half term, put your pyjamas on at 4pm on a Friday, get that early night, have that extra Margarita during happy hour and above all remember sometimes you are the pigeon, sometimes you are the statue.