Feeding the Beast

‘There is no such thing as a selfless good deed’

The Beginning

I still greatly cherish one of my earliest teaching moments- as a teaching assistant I had taken a student for some intervention on the structure of the atom, I also happened to scribe for this student in his chemistry GCSE. Despite him struggling in other sections of the exam, when it came to the question about the atom he got almost all of it right! I struggled to hold back my reaction as he reeled off correct answers one after the other.
The pure exhilaration was something I had rarely experienced in life, my smile beamed as I left the exam. I sincerely hoped that the student had passed his exam, and I was in a state of euphoria about having contributed in my own way, no matter how small.
 I’d had my first hit of teaching.

The Obsession

Since then almost my entire life has been consumed in the pursuit of feeding the beast. Ingesting educational twitter and books, attending conferences at weekends, communicating with colleagues, learning new strategies and techniques.
But the beast’s hunger is becoming harder to satiate. The harder I work towards becoming the best teacher I can be it feels less and less gratifying to have these small successes, and those once shiny, glimmering crumbs of satisfaction are now being stifled by the overbearing darkness of failure.  
I’m not longer satisfied if 98% of a class are performing well and enjoying their science, the power of failing with that 2% is far more significant.

Sometimes good is good enough

During my PGCE we were told this phrase often, alongside being warned against perfectionism. I think many teachers are naturally perfectionists and having met and spoken to many colleagues I think that it is particularly prevalent in less experienced teachers such as myself.
Is this because those who have been in the trade have been worn down over time? Have they reduced their expectations?

Motivation

This has lead me to question my motivation for teaching, do I do it because it’s a job I think I’m good at? Is it because I get the satisfaction of helping others? Or is it the selfish joy I get from contributing to success – something I can claim ownership of wrongly or rightly?
I have often felt teaching is somewhat thankless – if students perform brilliantly it is due to their excellent work, if students perform below expectations then their teacher has failed to provide them with the expected level of education.

Escaping the jaws

This year I am, for the first time, teaching students who I expect will struggle greatly with their GCSE exams. I am desperately searching for the light to guide me through this time.
I then found an article by Tom Rodgers in TES relating to research on the impact of teachers on results (I recommend you read this article).
As soon as I read it I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders, it helped to liberate me from tying my self-worth to my students’ results. It helped me focus again on trying to enjoy the process, not just the result. And I will go in on exam results morning with that same beaming smile, because I’ll know that I gave everything I could to put the students in a position to help themselves to a bright and wonderful future.


Tom Rodgers TES article - https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/teachers-can-only-ever-have-a-small-impact-their-students-results

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