‘Click on each book to read about it.’

THE ULTIMATE TEACHERS HANDBOOK

Published October 2005, Continuum International, ISNB 0 8264 8500 6

This book is the definitive guide to surviving and succeeding in teaching. It covers all the things which teachers are not told at university but desperately need to know once they find themselves teaching full-time.

Hazel Bennett, who has herself combined a career in teaching with running a home, bringing up a family and post-graduate study, gives advice on coping with a daunting amount of paperwork, an ever-increasing curriculum load, pressure from parents, surviving Ofsted and getting the best out of a pupil population who are frequently more concerned with their rights than their education.

It is humorously written, non-academic and jargon-free. The original proposal for this book won the Writers’ News non-fiction book proposal competition in 2003.

The Ultimate teachers’ handbook   

‘This publication reflects its title. It is powerful, informative, very helpful and written in a non-ambiguous manner. It should be on all students and NQT’s reading lists.’

Len Parkyn ‘The Teacher’ magazine of the National Union of Teachers.

 

PART ONE: The induction year

1 Starting off on the right foot

2 The parents

3 And what are we here for? The pupils

4 The thorny issue of discipline

5 Paperwork, planning and other time-consuming chores

6 Taking assembly

7 Organizing day trips

8 Report writing

9 The politics of the staff room – Who’s your friend?

10 Don’t forget the big picture

PART TWO: How to make the most of the next thirty years

11 Getting promotion

12 Alternative options for promotion

13 Advisory teacher/Consultant

14 One step up to be an advisor

15 Could you be an advanced skills teacher?

16 How to survive Ofsted

17 Special measures and fresh start

18 Supply teaching

20 Support teaching in someone else’s class

21 Unions and professional associations

22 Industrial action

23 Applying to move to the upper pay spine

24 Combining full-time teaching and part-time study

25 Combining full-time teaching with childrearing

26 Teaching in a school where your own children are pupils

27 Teachers’ TV channel

28 Bereavement in the school

29 Private tutoring

30 Advice for the overseas teachers in UK schools

31 If it all goes wrong, what else can a teacher do?

32 The last word. ‘If...(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

Extracts from The Ultimate Teachers’ Handbook

Starting off on the right foot

Your ability to control each class is largely determined by the quality of your relationship with them. Try to keep it at the front of your mind that all pupils have a need to be considered worthy of your attention and care. If you can establish  a relationship in which each individual pupil believes that you care for his/her well-being, this makes a firm foundation for a peaceful working relationship.

Discipline-wise, the first lesson you have with each class is the most important, because here is where you lay down the foundation for your future, working relationship. If you start off well the rest falls into place more easily. If you and the pupils rub each other up the wrong way, it can take a long time to mend the situation. Most of the following can apply to either primary or secondary.

·  Start each lesson on time;  set the tone that they have to be present and prepared at the start of each lesson. This is especially  important in secondary schools where pupils are changing class and have every opportunity to be late.

·  Speak respectfully to pupils. Some teachers are quick with a cutting or belittling remark, which may work in the short term but stores up trouble for the future.

·   When you acquire a new class, learn their names quickly. If you don’t address pupils by their names when delivering an instruction or a rebuke, it’s so easy for them to ignore you and pretend they thought you were talking to someone else.
·  Use a quiet, firm, polite manner to lay down your parameters before you start.

·  Some teachers spend the first half-hour negotiating an agreed contract with the class, establishing ground rules, of what teacher and pupil reasonably expect of each other, and pinning them up on the notice board.  This works fine as long as the teacher sticks to his/her side of the agreement. For example if the teacher agrees to mark the books each day/let the pupils out to play on time, and then does not keep it up, the contract falls apart easily.

· If you think you can’t cope with being consistent with a two-way contract you may find it easier to just lay down the rules and describe the consequences of them being ignored.

· Make it clear what you want pupils to bring to each lesson.

·   If you know in advance that a pupil is likely to be tricky, it is a good idea to ask a teacher who has worked with him/her what works best.

·   Also, catch him/her out doing the right thing. When they are doing what you want, say,  ‘That’s cool, Simena,’ It is so much more effective than rebuking them for doing the wrong thing.

·   Establish a clear, simple routine to your lessons. It’s not boring and humdrum, pupils like to know where they are and what’s coming next.
         
·   Always prepare more work than they can handle. The devil soon finds work for idle pupils.

‘IF’ (with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your cool when all around are losing theirs

And blaming it on the headmaster.

If you can cope with lost kids on school trips, impromptu class assemblies

And all-in fights, without disaster.

If you can face unpopularity and criticism

In order to put the blooming kids first.

If you can defend your colleagues when they’re wrong,

Knowing you will probably come out worst.

If you can laugh and start again

When all your work and efforts are brought to nought.

If you can keep kids on your side

When they know you’ve not prepared your lessons as you ought.

If you can patiently explain the simplest principle

Again and again and again and again.

If you can sanction and reprimand and at the end of the day

Still be regarded as a friend.

If you can persuade the kids to take SATs seriously

Though you know they’re just a farce.

If you can avoid telling the head

To shove his targets up his arse.

If you can encourage and keep on board the child who always fails

No matter how hard he tries.

If you make them take pride in their place in the league tables,

Knowing they’re just a Government PR exercise.

If you can care about Ofsted enough to pass,

But not so much as to sink into depression.

If you can cope with disappointment and failure

Several times in swift succession.

If you can make your point and stand firm,

In the face of opposition, without aggression.

You will last until you’re pensioned off, and what’s much more,

You will survive the teaching profession.