Why I left the Teaching profession and will never return to it

First of all, let me state for the record that I never set out in life to be a teacher... I merely fell into it by accident. When I began my training as a teacher, it was merely a stop-gap until something better came along. That said, for a short while I did get some enjoyment from the job, however I couldn't be happier that I left the profession and will NEVER return to it.

When I was a student, teachers garnered a certain level of respect. That respect has all but disappeared. Major reforms are needed in education but I can't see them ever being put in place. What follows is my opinions built up over seven years of teaching in eight schools across four different countries (not England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland - but instead four different countries across the world, England included).

The abolishment of grammar schools in favour of comprehensive schools was a terrible idea. This ideology of higher ability students bringing up lower ability students is absolute garbage. I've seen it for myself, what actually happens is the lower achieving drag down the higher achieving students. After all, if they high achievers see other students not doing their work and getting away with it, what is their incentive to do the work? Now I speak of only a small percentage of students, unfortunately however this percentage seems to be on the rise.

Discipline is the root cause of students' deteriorating behaviour, or rather a lack of. I was taught that the most important thing to establish in a classroom is proper classroom management. This also seems to have fallen by the wayside. I have seen teachers completely ignoring behavioural issues and instead trying to act as the students' friend. Again - terrible idea. A teacher must be the figure of authority within the classroom. Group students together and they are basically like a pack of wild dogs, if their is no leader then they will all vie and compete to be the alpha male or female. When you are the only teacher (it seems) abiding by the rules and enforcing the behavioural procedures, it is a battle that you can never win alone. I recently heard of a student who physically attacked a member of staff, pinning her against a wall whilst punching and kicking her. The poor woman was traumatised afterwards. The punishment for the student? A few days of suspension. If attacking a member of staff is not cause for immediate and permanent expulsion, then precisely what is?

However, discipline should first be established in the home. Unfortunately in the case of some that also seems to be falling by the wayside. The students who broke the rules and caused trouble when I was in school are now having children of their own so it now a case of second generation rule breakers (and in some cases even third generation). These are the parents that will be the first to complain that their child is underperfoming or being picked on when, in reality, it is because they are not making their child do their homework, nor establishing their own rules for behaviour in the home and instead excusing their child for all of their wrong-doings.

Further to this is telling the child of the supposed special learning requirement that they "suffer" from. Again, when I was a student myself, I don't recall any of the multitude of special requirements that children are labelled with now. If a child was naughty, it wasn't because they had "behavioural issues", it was because they were naughty and were treated as such. If a child displayed aggressive behaviour, it wasn't because they had "anger issues", it was because they were bad-tempered and were again treated as naughty children should be. If a child has a genuine issue, fine; inform the teacher. The child itself though should NEVER be told about what their issue is. All that does is give them a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card to behave however they want and have an excuse to fall back on. Rather than meddling in situations that they clearly know nothing about, these idiotic child psychologists should stop trying to justify the bad behaviour of children. Force them to work as a teacher in a school for a month. Then and only then will they see that not all children are born equal or fundamentally good at heart, just with psychological issues affecting their behaviour. Some children, unfortunately, are just rotten to the core. Then they grow up, still rotten, and give birth to rotten kids of their own. And so the cycle continues.

And then there is the paperwork. Teaching brings about a multitude of paperwork. First of all comes the planning of lessons and the paperwork to explain and support what you will be teaching. Then comes the teaching and hours of marking afterwards (that is to be expected). But then comes more paperwork and revisiting of past paperwork because at yet another meeting, it has been announced that the way you have been teaching students and managing your paperwork has been completely turned on its head, revised and overhauled so now everything that you are doing has been rendered obsolete. Now you have to update or redo all previous schemes of work, lesson plans and such because some meddling busybody who doesn't work in a school, probably never has, or hasn't done so in decades has decided that things need to be done differently for the "good of the child". I have seen several such major revisions and reforms introduced in my years as a teacher and all it ever did was confuse teachers, students and parents alike. One was a revision to the grading system - for some reason, the system of 'A, B, C...' was no longer valid - students needed numbers to know what level they were at. Except that they would continually ask "What grade is this?" afterwards. The second was the introduction of targets for teachers to justify their own pay-rise. Translation: yet more paperwork. I am all for lesson observations and feedback given to teachers - how else would they improve? But to provide them with targets - and completely unrealistic targets at that - in order to qualify for a pay-rise is wholly unfair. Ensuring that every student achieves at least a grade 'C'? Not every student is equal in ability. Sometimes despite their best efforts, all they can achieve in a certain subject is a 'D'.

I am sure that there are still good teachers out there as there are good students. Unfortunately they both seem to be diminishing breeds. Something needs to be done to correct the problems. That person who has the courage to do so, will undoubtedly be wholly torn apart and scorned for such radical reforms (this time justified) at first, but ultimately that's what education needs and that person will be remembered as a saviour of education in time to come. Unfortunately I doubt that anyone is that brave.

Filthy has its advantages

I've walked into shops wearing my bumbag (arguably the most unfashionable item in existence) containing poop bags, keys and dog treats.

I've walked into shops still wearing my mud-encrusted wellies.

But today I took it one step further and walked into the supermarket splattered head to toe in mud. Who knows what the people around me were thinking. Maybe that I'd just walked off a building site? But that wouldn't explain the blue embroidered paw prints on my t-shirt. To be honest it doesn't really matter, I love my job and wouldn't change it for the world. Nevertheless, walking around covered in inexplicable mud in a public place has an unrivalled way of ensuring people give you a wide berth. Maybe next time I'll keep my wellies on too...

Life imitating art imitating life

Recently, we have settled down to the box sets of How I Met Your Mother. Before now, I dipped in and out of it and would watch it when I saw it on but never really watched it consistently. I think part of the reason is that it was largely shown whilst I was living in Singapore but I digress...

Now whilst it cannot remotely be classed as a real-life type show (it's more Friends meets Family Guy, what with all the cutaways and all) yet it's strange how frequently it touches on issues that I can relate to. The Bro Code... to a certain extent. The Play Book... not even a little.

Yet it's two specific episodes in Season 2 I refer to (it remains to be seen whether other episodes will do the same). The episodes in question are Episodes 7 and 12 entitled Swarley and First Time In New York respectively.

Swarley features Chloe - the girl with the crazy eyes and then Ted and Barney both relate their own experiences of girls they have met with the same crazy-eyes. Unfortunately I've known three and all in relatively short succession.

The first was a girl I met on a night out at the start of teacher training. The fact that she had taken her shoes off in the club should have been the first indication that all was not quite right, yet I managed to overlook it. To cut a long story short, the signs of craziness appeared very quickly and the next day I soon realised my mistake when I got a text reading "Is it weird that I miss you?". Yes, it was weird. I quickly ended it before anything properly got started. Or so I thought I did. The girl wouldn't take no for an answer and weeks followed of endless texts and voicemail messages getting steadily more abusive about why I no longer replied and why was I ignoring her. I thought it was pretty obvious why I was. Even after having a female friend pose as my girlfriend and speak to her didn't put her off. She left a final message stating that she had quit university and was going home to France. She was English.

The second case actually overlapped with the first. A girl messaged me through Myspace - the precursor to Facebook (all those years ago...). A short time later the same girl accosted me during the day in the Student Union, berating me for being so distant in my replies. Up until that point I had never met her and it took me a few minutes of having her scream in my face until I realised who she actually was. She then stormed off only to sit down next to me without me knowing several minutes later. My friend pointed out that she was back, at which point the berating began anew before she again stormed off. When I arrived home I found a long message via Myspace apologising for shouting but still wanting to know why I had been so "distant". I never replied.

The third notable case came a year later with another woman who could not take no for an answer. What made this one even more uncomfortable was that she worked in the same school that I just started working at. After a night out with colleagues, admittedly after a few too many to drink, I fell asleep in a colleague's lounge. I awoke with this crazy woman (not the owner of the house) stroking my hair. She then tried to kiss me. I ran. My mate was due to be staying over on my couch that night - "Grab your coat," I told him, "we have to leave - NOW!" Still she didn't get the hint and jumped in the same taxi with us. "I live nearby - I'll get out here," she announced as we pulled up outside my flat. "No you won't!" my mate replied and closed the car door before she had a chance to get out. For weeks after she tried to friend me on Facebook. Each time I declined, only to receive another request mere minutes later. I am not exaggerating.

The other episode of How I Met Your Mother I relate to is First Time In New York where Robin has trouble telling Ted that she loves him. I know this well. Tammy is the only girl that I have ever said this to and I had real trouble early on in telling her. Just as I had had the Thunderbolt moment when I first met her, I was expecting the same sort of earth-shattering sign to tell her how I felt. The truth was that I didn't need anything. Not everything has to have big monumental signs. Sometimes you have to make the moment monumental yourself. I had always been afraid of saying those three words, fearing that it would make me vulnerable. And in saying them it does make you vulnerable... in the best way. You can never move things to the next level until you say "I love you" and will never be as close as once you have said them.

Admitting how I knew I felt was the best thing I could have done and we've never looked back since. Now we say "I love you" multiple times a day yet it never ever loses its meaning, worth or validity.

So once more for the record... Tammy, I love you.

It's been a while...

My, how things have changed...

I haven't posted any new blogs in six years and just comparing who I am now to who I was then, I am literally worlds apart. Well half a world at least...

When I last posted I was living in Singapore. Now I'm back in the UK, a place where I never then believed I would come back to live. I loved living in a big city, loved the hustle and bustle of it all. Now I avoid all that like the Plague and am living in a semi-rural town in Cheshire.

Back then I had just started a new teaching job and was earning more money than I had ever earned before. Sure I still had an element of that new job excitement, but I wasn't enjoying the stress, pressure or workload being put on me. Skip forward 6 years and I'm earning significantly less, not particularly utilising any of my qualifications and spending my days picking up dog shit. But I'm my own boss, working with animals of all kinds on a day-to-day basis and have never been happier in the work I'm doing. Setting up the business was an uphill struggle and brought about its own tribulations and stresses but ultimately it seems to have paid off for the better.

But the most significant change over all is I am now a happily married man. 6 years ago, Tammy and I were dating but we didn't even live together (that came but a month and a half after my last post). We travelled together, got engaged by the Taj Mahal then a year after marrying made the decision to move to the UK. More stress was involved, including the shipping of two pet cats, which although expensive and emotionally stressful was actually one of the more straightforward aspects of relocating one's life across the globe. We went through the whole "this move was a terrible, terrible mistake phase" and came out the other side. In our four years married together it feels like we've dealt with more setbacks as a couple than others have to deal with in a lifetime together, but we've persevered and survived and are that much stronger for it.

I can only imagine what the next six years hold in store, but perhaps I'll document it a bit more frequently this time at least...