Teacher reflects on 10 years as an educator

6 min read

In this reflective article, teacher Varinder Kaur Johal responds to the question ‘is your role as a teacher evolving and how has it changed?’ after 10 years as an educator.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on this lately as I approach ten years of teaching, recently enrolling on a post-graduate course, as well as ten years of Gurmat camps (Sikh studies during the holidays) with over 300 children aged 6-16.

When I think about my PGCE teacher training year, I believe there were two 8–12 week placements and 3 assignments in one year. But I don’t think it fully ‘prepares’ you for teaching: it equips you with some knowledge and experience, but teaching is a profession where you ‘learn on the go’ and you have to adapt. Children, your views, policies and practices, expectations within the school—they all change; there’s a lot.

It’s interesting to think of the different areas within teaching that ‘evolve’:

• Lesson planning
• Delivery
• Language
• Environment
• Expectations (of yourself and pupils)
• Behaviour ‘management’ strategies
• Communication with pupils, colleagues, parents/carers
• Interaction
• Assessment, marking and feedback
• Safeguarding

and so on!

With experience, knowledge and understanding but most importantly reflection, my role as a teacher in the different spaces has evolved and is still evolving. For example, early on in my career, I would be quite hasty when dealing with ‘undesirable’ behaviour and raise my voice often. But over the years, I have come to understand that it’s not the child’s behaviour that needs addressing, it might be my delivery or expectations, and realising there could be something impacting this behaviour. Now I reflect more deeply, perhaps the child is bored, not challenged enough or struggling with the work, feeling overwhelmed, maybe over or under stimulated. And I take their mental and emotional well-being into consideration as well as my attitude, enthusiasm and delivery. A huge factor is also expectations, my expectations of the children, myself and the way I should support them with their emotions and behaviour.

One practice that comes to mind when I think about this is taking away playtime as a ‘sanction’, which we still see happen quite often. I too was guilty of this at the start of my teaching journey. But let’s think about what is being taken away from the child in that moment – the child’s break, their time to get fresh air, have a snack, move outside, all things they need to be able to learn. Which makes me think about a friend of mine with a child in primary school. She was saying how her daughter has been kept in at break times to complete her work. She told me her daughter writes quite slowly and tries to write ‘perfectly’. She also puts a lot of pressure on her pencil and her hand gets tired. Now, this child who is trying to take care with her presentation and happens to write slowly is being kept in at play time to complete her work. This is just one example. We need to listen to each child and reflect on what they are telling us.

Conversations like these with other practitioners and professionals, parents/carers and children themselves have helped to shape my teaching role, practice and understanding. Your practice can only truly be evolving if your knowledge and understanding is evolving too. Through conversations and interactions with others you gain experiences and understanding, but you have to be open to receive it and use it to aid your reflection and take it on board. I’ve learnt from others, and my own experiences, that have stayed with me from childhood into adulthood and that have shaped certain parts of my personality and life. When I realised the true impact I have on a child’s life (whether that’s 30 in a classroom or 300 in a Gurmat camp in the summer) that’s where I became more conscious with my practice, from my language, delivery, thought process, taking the ‘smaller’ things into consideration and using a ‘holistic’ approach to teaching.

Something that I have been a lot more mindful of is children’s mental and emotional well-being, and discussing emotions, triggers and our responses. A term in particular that comes to mind is it’s better to respond than react. It isn’t possible to be prepared for EVERYTHING but knowing and understanding that children are still developing emotionally, and that they are still building their emotional literacy, helps us to put things into perspective and to co-regulate.

I have learned to involve the children. If there are things that are difficult to accommodate in the classroom, we need to explain this to them. I reflect on how to give children the space to feel sad, cry, or withdraw to somewhere quiet, respecting their boundaries. I’ve seen a lot of negative interactions between ‘adults’ and children and it’s interesting to see how the situation escalated and identifying the opportunities to de-escalate. Because sometimes, we do make things ‘worse’. We’re not all at the stage where we can pause and reflect, consider our language or actions, it can take time to learn this, but we need to keep on actively trying to.

In order for my role to evolve, there has been a lot of CPD. I arranged a lot of this myself because I wanted to gain more knowledge and understanding in different areas and try to apply it to my teaching practice as there is always room for improvement. When you think about the CPD provided by schools, we can see funding is sometimes a downfall, but also there are often essential topics missing: I haven’t received any CPD on anti-racism, very little on emotional coaching and nothing about children’s well-being, looking at behaviour, creativity or play. These topics are vital to help a teacher to evolve their practice and support children effectively, because the children in our classrooms have different backgrounds, interests, learning approaches and types of behaviour. In any class I’m in, I really want to support children individually as best as I can.

Over the years I have also developed the language I use when I’m talking with children. It is so important to speak with the children respectfully, recognising they are their own individuals with their own ideas, rather than thinking “I’m the teacher and need to get this message across”. Knowing how my words have an impact, what I say and how I say it, has really shifted my mindset. There needs to be genuine compassion when teaching, nurturing children to support them to become the best they can, physically, mentally, emotionally and academically. I remember when I first started teaching, especially in Key Stage 2, I could get ‘triggered’ when a child ‘answered back’ or was rude. I felt that who do you think you’re talking to reaction. I don’t know if it was in my ego thinking I’m better than the child because I’m the teacher, but I came to realise that it is my role to demonstrate respect, set clear expectations that don’t overload, and not to react but to respond appropriately. In situations I’ve found particularly hard, I’ve learnt consistency is key, remaining calm, having clear communication with the child, SLT, and parents/carers because it’s not a one-person job. Maybe that was me in my ego again trying to do everything, but now I ask for support if needed.

I am fortunate to be in the position I am in, to have conversations and experiences with educators and professionals across different ages, locations and settings, as well as parents/carers and children of different ages. We all need to really take these on board and implement change for the better.