Teaching is an emotional rollercoaster
As a teacher you’ll never feel so loved or so hated at the same time. I’ve had students who hate me at the beginning of a class, who keep running away and sometimes even cry when they look at me, and by the end of the lesson we’re best friends and we’re playing catch together.
There’s one thing a teacher should never admit to
Having favourites is a no, no. As a teacher, and a model professional, I would never say that I have favourite students, certainly not. But, the real golden rule of having favourites is that a teacher never tells. You get a lot of stick for the holidays That we get 13 weeks of holiday is a subject that’s often brought up in the pub with my friends who aren’t teachers, and they don’t think it’s fair. I spent the first year of my teaching career trying to justify that we need them and explain that it’s not three months of pure freedom – and that teaching isn’t a 9am-3.30pm job. But no one believed me.
Fellow teachers are often more troublesome than students
There are a number of times where I’ve had other teachers come into my kit cupboard to borrow my equipment – without asking. Nine times out of ten they either don’t return it and you’ll find it lying around the gym, or they return it but put it in a completely different place. Even kids don’t do that.
Detentions are as bad for the teacher as the pupil
Sure a detention might seem like a necessary punishment at the time – but then you realise it’s not only the student missing their lunchtime, it’s also you.
Even the best teachers aren’t always right (shh)
Most teachers have at some point spent half a lesson teaching the wrong thing before realising. But a good teacher (like me) always corrects themselves.
