How to be a star teacher
How did you get into teaching?
Before I started teaching I combined day jobs with the life of an unsuccessful esoteric rock artist. I made the move into teaching in a pitiful last-ditch attempt to save a doomed relationship.
What qualities does it take to be a good teacher?
To some extent it depends on the environment where you teach. Teaching in inner-city schools demands a lot of resilience. If you teach properly it’s emotionally and physically draining and you have to be able to go into work when you’re dog-tired. You need real moral strength and commitment – in the first year of teaching your inner spiritual resources will be tested utterly. It does get easier, however!
An almost political passion for the life chances of children is crucial, as well as an intrinsic love of spending time with them, good subject knowledge and the willingness to learn new things and admit your mistakes. Being funny and coming from a performance background is a definite help. The bottom line is that you must be passionate and have high expectations of the pupils – they have every right to reach their full potential and you are the catalyst for that.
What’s the main purpose of school education?
"Education is about enlivening a lifelong love of learning in children and helping them to fulfil their potential."
Education is about enlivening a lifelong love of learning in children, helping them to fulfil their potential and opening up their options. I went to a comprehensive school in special measures, but thanks to my education I’ve ended up doing things that were outside of my expectations – from writing for The Guardian to writing a book, winning awards, being on telly and spending a night on the tiles with David Soul in a Swindon Hotel.
How do teachers help children to enjoy learning for its own sake?
As a teacher you need to work out how to make lessons fun and transmit your passion for your subject to the students. Gandhi said that you have to be the change you want to see in the world. As a teacher you have to be able to embody the passion and joy that you expect from your students: if you can’t give it out, you won’t get it back. If the kids think a subject’s boring and hard, it’s your responsibility as a teacher to make it interesting – and not hard.
What should someone thinking about becoming a teacher ask themselves?
Why not? What’s stopping you from taking up the most fascinating, emotionally taxing, life-changing experience there is? If you want to ‘make a difference’ think about this: they say a teacher has on average 2,000 social interactions a day – normal people have six. Each one has the potential to change someone’s life. Go and check it out: you won’t be disappointed.
Phil Beadle started work as an English teacher in 1997 and worked for ten years in schools in London. He quickly qualified as an advanced skills teacher and was appointed as the Specialist Schools Trust’s lead practitioner in boys’ achievement. He was also involved in a Department for Education and Skills mobility project. In 2004 he won the Secondary School Teacher of the Year category in the Teaching Awards. This led to his appearing on the Channel 4 programme The Unteachables, for which he won a Royal Society of Television award. Phil’s book on teaching techniques, Could Do Better, is published by Doubleday and his new book, How to be a Great Teacher in your First Year, is published by Crown House. He is currently working part time at a secondary school in Wandsworth.