The power of Emotions
Every hour of every school day, teachers are being held to ransom by their Emotions. Yet, they believe that the emotions they feel affect only them. They become isolated, resentful, depressed.
By not thinking and processing our emotions, we are having our thinking done for us by our emotions and our most primitive defenses. We are allowing ourselves to be dominated by negative thoughts and what feel like impossible scenarios. We are too often living for a time when we will be free of the lesson, free of the responsibility of teaching, free of the moment. Our thoughts are about being elsewhere because where we are is too much to endure.
Imagine if that were not the case…
Imagine that you could bring all of your experience and your expertise into a lesson and share your subject knowledge with passion to students who are engaged. Imagine if you could just be present where you are. If the real focus of your thoughts and emotions could be working with you and for you and for the benefit of those who you teach. Something so simple often sounds like an extraordinary idea. Yet the steps we can take involve thinking about teaching and learning in the most ordinary way.
There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of books related to how to make you a better teacher, from “How to implement the Ofsted framework into your teaching practice” to books specific to your subject area to books concerning classroom management and making the pupils behave to lessening your marking and workload by marking ‘smart’ to how to be a ‘lazy’ teacher and still get great results. The list is seemingly endless and maybe the reason for that is very straightforward, the need is endless, fathomless, ever evolving.
Yet, through it all, for all of the add-ons, the vocabulary and tools that teachers are offered, there remains one constant; the relationships one has in the classroom.
Once, the corridor quietens, the door closes and you look up, you find that you are a teacher and in front of you are a group of young people who, despite some of their apparent wishes, are there to be ‘taught’.
It is this relationship, its simplicity and complexity, that is the focus of this blog.
I know from my own experience that this “system” works. It has worked for me. More recently, I have passed on the ideas to other colleagues and they consistently report that it works for them. Many say that it has revolutionised their teaching, some say it has changed their lives.
There is no magic wand. Teaching is tough. It was ever thus and will be ever thus. There is no promise of a miracle here. If, like me, you know that demands are great, the workload often impossible but feel that, like a bestseller, the narrative of teaching is hard to put down then maybe these posts and pages will help.
Next: Beginnings: What does it mean to be a teacher?
