Sarah McHugh, former Oxford student and now Assistant Headteacher for Teaching and Learning and OTSA Teaching School Director explains why it is the job for her:
Teaching isn’t predictable, no two days are the same and that variety has kept me interested for the last sixteen years; I never thought I could do one thing for that long!
Teaching is stretching – even though you are only teaching up to Year 6, GCSE or A’level there are often things you have never come across before and understanding them well enough to teach is really difficult as is thinking about how you teach them.
It might sound corny but you are also making a difference (to the kids!) and that sense is there even after a difficult day. Nothing beats the feeling of the seeing a child’s face as they finally understand something or become confident in your subject for the first time or working with a child who is too cool to like school but is suddenly loving the learning in spite of themselves.
I don’t want to be too self-congratulatory but other teachers make the job fun too. People go into teaching for good reasons – because they want to make a difference to young people to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor and because they like learning. Being around like-minded people is fun.
Finally, and it would be disingenuous not to include them, the holidays are great. Even though you might work long hours in term time and some holiday days too you do get thirteen weeks when you don’t have to get up first thing, when you can take big trips and just enjoy some ‘you’ time.
So, if you like being around young people and want to empower them, enjoy thinking on your feet and like the idea of being off for a quarter of the year then this may be the career for you and the next step is obvious; train to teach with Oxfordshire Teacher Training (OTT).
OTT provides training across Oxfordshire and I train teachers – EYFS to secondary – in the Southern hub based at Gillotts School in Henley. It’s a fantastic course – research-driven and written by great teachers for people who want to be one. Our hub is small and so the relationships that bind us are strong; join us now, don’t delay!