I was going to write about I time I was demotivated myself, there have certainly been enough of those. However, since I am certainly not free of sin, I thought it would be easier to write about a time I failed as a teacher.
After graduating from university, for want of anything else to do, I qualified as a secondary school teacher (ages 11-16 in the UK). My undergraduate degree was biological sciences and my teaching qualification was for general science. Obviously it makes sense that one of my first teaching jobs was as a stand in teacher, teaching physical education.
One of the classes I was expected to instruct was a final year group, rapidly approaching their exams. The group had been taught by a succession of temporary teachers for the final two years of their course and while they excelled at the physical aspects of the course, populating the school teams with several students performing at county and national levels, the theory part of the course had been somewhat neglected. My role was to cram two years of human biology and sport science into 8 weeks.
Needless to say I failed. The students quickly lost interest in the class, absenteeism was high and classroom discipline was poor.
In retrospect my failings were many. I was not sure in my own knowledge of the course material. While I knew (or thought I knew) everything on the syllabus, I did not have the breadth of knowledge required to make the subject interesting or to place new content within pre-existing knowledge. Possibly worst of all I did not plan a well structured approach to teaching the course content. The only teaching style I was confident with using was a very didactic, textbook and lecturing approach. Having recently graduated from university I was used to this approach, the students were more familiar with a more interactive, exploratory teaching style.
I also did not take the time to investigate the background knowledge of the class. My teaching made too many assumptions about the background knowledge held by the students. This problem was compounded by my inexperience as a teacher, I often took the lack of questions to indicate understanding, rather than incomprehension and disinterest. By the time I had identified a knowledge gap there was no time to go back and fill it, often half of each lesson was spent covering material that should have been taught in earlier lessons and was now presented out of context. This often left a shortage of time to cover new material which in turn was rushed. I wish now that I had spent much more time preparing the lecture series. A concept map would have helped clarify both my own knowledge of the subject and to identify the assumed background knowledge.
I’m sure there were many other failings but this is embarrassing enough for now. To the students in that class I apologise. Partially as a result of this experience I left high school teaching, a decision I have rarely regretted. Finally, this has been a very cathartic experience, thank you for listening.