NQTS


Getting ready for round two


a lot of good decisions during the year. You have developed some sound working practices and good working habits as the year has progressed. You might not have recognised what you have


C induction end?


how your school operates and you are making fewer mistakes today than you did back in September. This means that if you are staying in the same school next year, and if your job will be broadly similar to what it has been this year, you probably will not need any further induction into the working environment. As far as your induction into the teaching profession


is concerned, you almost certainly have some way to travel before you complete your induction. By the end of the summer term you will have experienced one annual cycle of the teaching role. You will have taken students through a syllabus or programme once, but you will not, yet, have taught a two-year programme. You will have experienced the events that take place in every school year, but you will not have experienced many of the situations that occur less frequently in teaching. As a result, there are still quite a few teaching tasks


you have yet to meet for the first time. You are likely to need to call on the support of more experienced colleagues when you first encounter at least some of those tasks. Your confidence in your ability to cope with the


everyday demands of the job without additional guidance will grow as your teaching experience grows, but you will probably need to work through a further annual cycle of teaching before you feel confident that you really are on top of the job. This means that although you have completed a


year in teaching, you have not yet reached the end of your induction. However, you will start your second year with quite a few induction successes to your credit.


SecEd • June 24 2010 What do other people think?


Your views on your progress are important, but you will also need to take other people’s opinions into consideration if you are going to have a well-rounded view of your progress through your induction. Formal reviews, feedback from your mentor, and


the ending of your probationary year will give you a good indication of your current achievements and where you still need to develop your abilities. Informal feedback will be helpful, too. If you find that colleagues seek out your guidance and help, you can be sure that people are starting to recognise your achievements and value your expertise. Both types of feedback will help you to be more


confident that you are approaching the end of your induction.


When exactly will your induction end?


The passing of time and your success in dealing with the challenges that all teachers face will help you to demonstrate both to yourself and to others that you are progressing. In the end you will decide when you reach the end of your induction. In part, you will make your decision based on well-


founded confidence in your abilities. In part you will make your decision based on the feedback you receive on your performance from people in school. However, the best indication that your induction


has ended will come when someone who knows your work well says: “I really couldn’t imagine you as anything but a teacher. You were made to be a teacher.”


SecEd


been doing, but you have been developing and refining your ways of working all through the year. Now is the time to make a list of the approaches


you have adopted that work and to make a commitment to yourself to use them again next year. It is also time to review how well you have dealt with some of the challenges that teachers face, so that you can decide whether to address them in the same way next year or to try a different approach. As you start to prepare for your second year in


teaching take time now to remind yourself of your successes and reflect on the working habits of one highly effective teacher – you.


Making progress


You have come a long way in your first year and you know a lot more about being a teacher than you did last September. Although you were already a subject specialist


at the beginning of the year, you have extended your knowledge over the past three terms. You now know which aspects of your subject you really enjoy teaching. You also know which areas of the curriculum you teach well. You are probably also on your way to becoming your department’s expert or specialist in an area of provision. You have learned a lot about coping with the task


of teaching your subject, too. You have developed ways of teaching the first lesson after lunch, or the last lesson on a Friday afternoon, well. You have worked out ways of teaching an


effective lesson when a class comes to you after PE, and students arrive at varying times because some of them take longer than others to get changed. In fact, you could produce a guide on how


to survive and flourish in teaching, because over the last year you have honed your abilities to do things well. Why don’t you write that guide just for yourself, to help you to continue to succeed next year?


Becoming a team player


When you arrived in your school last September, you joined a number of teams. You became part of the teaching staff and part of your department’s team. You probably also became part of the pastoral team with a role in a year group or house. Since you arrived in school you have tried out


quite a few ways of working harmoniously and effectively with people. Along the way you have learned how to manage relationships with different types of people. You have learned how to work in a complementary manner to other people. You have been successful, too. You are now an


integral part of several teams in school, whereas back in September, you were a newcomer. When you arrived in school you did not know how you would need to adapt your behaviour and your


ONGRATULATIONS! YOU have done it. You have almost reached the end of your NQT year. You are still a teacher and you are looking forward to your next year in teaching. That means you have made


working style in order to fit into those teams. Now you have made those adjustments. In developing your team-working abilities, you


have tried some approaches that work better than others. Think about them now. Which approaches have been successful for you? How have your approaches to team-working changed and developed over the year? Which approaches to team-working do you intend to use again next year? Make your decisions now while what worked best is still fresh in your mind.


Facing teaching’s challenges


You knew when you became a teacher you would encounter lots of challenges. You had not experienced any of them at first hand a year ago. Now you have. Some of these challenges confront NQTs, headteachers and everyone else in school. Probably the most significant of these is the challenge of staying on top of your workload. As a teacher with a year’s experience behind you,


you know that you never actually get everything done. You work hard, but there is always more to do. There is always more you could do. How well have you adapted to this situation? What sort of strategies have you used to deal with your workload? Have you adopted good – and successful – working habits to help you to cope? Look back over the last year and consider how


successful you have been. Have you ever allowed schoolwork to take over your whole life? Have you spent more evenings and weekends working than you would like? Have you managed to create, and then hold onto, the sort of work/life balance you value? Have you found a way of handling the feeling of guilt that creeps up on you when you know you have got marking to do, but you also know you are not going to do it yet? On balance, do you believe you have handled


your workload well? If you have, what lessons from this year do you need to take forward? Make a judgement of your success. Consider


what you might need to do differently next year to help you to be even more successful at keeping on top of the tasks on your list of things you really must do.


Looking ahead


You might have a tendency to be very critical of yourself and only see what you could have done better rather than also paying attention to what you have done well. You might agonise over whether you have been successful this year, quite successful, very successful, outstandingly successful or something quite different. One way of evaluating your success is to work


out how many good working habits you intend to carry forward to next year and how many of your approaches to your work as a teacher you intend to change. Completing this analysis will help you to be


clear in your own mind about whether you are now preparing for the second round in a boxing match or getting ready to glide effortlessly around a second circuit on the race track.


SecEd


• Margaret Adams is a former teacher and the author of How To Take Charge Of Your Teaching Career (Continuum International Publishing, 2008).


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