The last time I put a post on my blog was in August, which, although being 2 months ago, feels like ages ago! If you’d like a reminder, I wrote about Imposter Syndrome and how it’s affected me through University and the weird world of work and life so far, and how it was making me feel going into my new job as a Learning Support Assistant and EAL Teacher, at my old Secondary School and Sixth Form.
The good news is I have been in the job for over a month now. The even better news is that I have honestly never, ever been happier in a job and with the direction I finally feel myself going in.
While the first thought I had about this blog post was for it to be a reflection on the past month, some of the conversations I have had this past week, and also with today being World Mental Health Day, the main focus of this post is going to be confidence.
I’ve been finding my feet being a member of staff in an actual school (even weirder getting my head around being a member of staff in the school where I was once a student and working with great people who used to actually teach me…), and navigating a one way system around the school and different year groups’ having different finish times, as well as, for the first time, having some degree of control over what I teach my EAL students. It’s been CRAZY. Crazily good; crazily weird and sometimes crazily overwhelming. But, that’s all okay.
Honestly, the past couple of weeks, I felt as though I’d hit a bit of a brick wall and taken several steps backwards. A few of the lessons which I taught made me feel a little deflated and defeated and I have found it hard to not be upset about it, no matter how many times I remind myself that this is my first proper teaching position, and I’m not a qualified teacher yet. This last week, I had an observer in one of my lessons, something which would have terrified me a year or two ago but I felt quietly confident about what I was going to teach (interestingly, it was a lesson about Kindness ahead of WMHD) with a focus on reading and then watching a video. But, it was the feedback the following day that made me emotional and contemplative. My teaching style is apparently calm. I remember in China being told that I was too quiet to even be considering a career in teaching. But I remember being in lessons when I was at school and being inspired by those teachers who were calm and not loud in the classroom. To be told that about my teaching style in a positive way made me very emotional. I have spent years questioning whether I can actually make it as a teacher which has been my dream since I was in school, and all it has taken is one conversation to plant that seed of “maybe I can do this”. And I am grateful. And I think it goes back to what I said earlier on that I have never been happier in a job. My next step is to get rid of that maybe in the “maybe I can do this”, which, I think, by keeping on learning and I’ve also been so fortunate to be able to attend teacher training sessions every week where I seem to leave with so many ideas and so much new knowledge that I get a bit overwhelmed but they are great and I’ve already shared two activities with the trainee teachers that I’ve done in my EAL lessons… I imagine when I do my teacher training next year, they’ll just get me to run the sessions (ha, ha, ha…)!
I have recently read (and re-read, and then re-re-read lots of bits) a brilliant book called A Quiet Education - Challenging The Extrovert Ideal In Our Schools, by Jamie Thom. There is a chapter in there entitled Too Quiet To Teach? This chapter really stuck out for me and I often return to it when I have my self-doubt moments. One bit which speaks volumes to me is - “We need to recognise the many strengths of quieter teachers. The list is long: reflective skills; interpersonal skills; a dislike of conflict that can facilitate calm classrooms; drive and focus; a passion for their subject; and, perhaps most important of all, a deep empathy for their students and colleagues.”
I think this job has also been great for my work-life balance too. Sometimes, I will do lesson planning and I always do reading at home, but I have my Friday evenings free for Karate – which I recently graded to my green belt in! Most importantly as well, I don’t feel worried or ashamed about asking for help if I need it (which has been a lot!) and I feel supported. Which I don’t think I have ever, ever had in any job.
