The Pitfalls of Teaching

If you ask any teacher to name what’s wrong with the profession, they could probably reel at least five points off the top of their head without even blinking. Poor staffing levels, ridiculous admin, teaching irrelevant topics, overly-stringent marking regimes, the cull of creative subjects… the list of the pitfalls of teaching goes on. And to be fair, sometimes so do we. Everyone knows that teachers love a good moan, and we’re certainly masters of the art of complaining. But we’re also masters of Pulling Our Socks Up and Getting On With It. We know the flaws in the teaching, but we do it anyway.But should we?I saw aninteresting exchange on Twitter the other day. A teacher was bemoaning theirlatest teaching pitfall (some hoop-jumping exercise which took time away fromteaching children and instead focused on an obscure admin task designed toproduce meaningless data). Various people commented with their sympathies, andthen one Twitter user turned the tide, with a simple comment: why don’t you dosomething about it?What?WHAT?Why don’t you do something about it? Thecomment made my blood boil. Fortunately, I’ve taken a step back from mykeyboard warrior phase and I’ve learnt the art of scrolling on, but the commentcontinued to niggle at me all evening. It’s one I’ve heard before: fromfriends, from acquaintances, from parents, from politicians. If teaching’s so bad, if there are so manypitfalls, why don’t you change it? Unable to bite my tongue any longer, hereis my three-pronged riposte:We’re trying. We honestly are. You know the teachingunions that people moan about? Well, they’re campaigning for change constantly.Sometimes, even to the point of striking. The problem is, nobody listens.We’re over a barrel. Increasingly, teacher payis being linked to pupil performance. It’s one of the biggest pitfalls ofteaching. So, it’s all very well asking people to make a stand against thesystem, but if that means they sacrifice their pay as a result, then teachingbecomes an even less appealing profession. Most of us do it for love, notmoney, but we can’t live on air.Why should we? Last time I looked, education waseveryone’s business. Everyone has a stake in how the youngpeople of today are educated. If they are being starved of resources, if theyare being taught meaningless, obscure points of grammar, if they are havingtheir creativity curbed, then that is a problem for all of us. Teaching pitfalls affect us all. Instead of expectingteachers to fight the system alone, maybe everyone else should give it a go,too.The system is flawed and it is failing our children in many, many ways. But change won’t happen until people stand with teachers against the insanity. As Helen Keller, someone who truly knew the power of a great teacher, said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”Subscribe to Beyond for access to thousands of secondary teaching resources. You can sign up for a free account here and take a look around at our free resources before you subscribe too.You May Also Want to Read:Why Teachers Need Play Time Too

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The Pitfalls of Teaching