Chasing the thrill of learning will make us better teachers

Learning shouldn’t be a luxury: it has the potential to invigorate teachers, helping them rediscover the joy of their profession
2nd June 2017, 12:00am
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Chasing the thrill of learning will make us better teachers

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/chasing-thrill-learning-will-make-us-better-teachers

I know exactly how my life would be if I was a university student. I’d hole up in the mahogany-panelled Ghostbusters library, immersed in old, leathery texts. After losing myself in ideas for hours on end, I’d whip on a woolly scarf (it’s always autumn at my university) and dash off down Diagon Alley to a lecture by Indiana Jones one day, or Stephen Hawking the next. On the way home, I’d stop off for a quick protest with 1960s Germaine Greer before skipping back to my campus dorm to invent Facebook. I might also slay vampires if I’ve time before the next Ghostbusters library, immersed in old, leathery texts.

After losing myself in ideas for hours on end, I’d whip on a woolly scarf (it’s always autumn at my university) and dash off down Diagon Alley to a lecture by Indiana Jones one day, or Stephen Hawking the next. On the way home, I’d stop off for a quick protest with 1960s Germaine Greer before skipping back to my campus dorm to invent Facebook. I might also slay vampires if I’ve time before the next march.

I’m less besotted with the idea of working in higher education. In real life, I have a couple of mates who are professors at different universities. Though the teaching bit is only a small portion of their jobs, their moans about students are frighteningly similar to mine: put your phone away while I’m talking/your attendance is a problem/ no you can’t have an extension on the work that was due two weeks ago.

I haven’t had any formal learning on the go this year and I’ve really missed it. I’m a better teacher when I’m learning. There’s something about the cycle of giving and receiving knowledge that provides me with a solid foundation for my daily work. Right now, I need a boost to my teaching mojo and wonder if stepping back from it for a little while to concentrate on studying might be a good investment. I’ve already got lots of teaching qualifications and would have to do a year’s part-time study at university to top it up to a degree.

Down the rabbit hole

Learning just for the sake of it is hard to knock, even if the reality falls short of the well-lit and beautifully scripted version in my mind; you rarely hear anyone say “I wish I knew less”.

The act of learning isn’t the problem: it’s the application of it. It’s all very well knowing stuff, but what can I do with it? My worry is that the time and cash investment might not help me improve my practice. What if I leap down the academic rabbit hole and come out the other end full of new theoretical understanding but just as consumed by teacher-fatigue as I currently am?

It’s easy to assume that, when we talk about “education being under attack” from governmental policies, it’s just referring to funding cuts. But something more pernicious trickles out of that. The increasing cost of access to education make us start to measure its value in increasingly economic terms. If you’re paying the fees, that’s important - but there’s profoundly more to it.

There’s a Stewart Lee video in which he recounts a visit Margaret Thatcher made to a university in the 1980s. She met a woman studying Norse literature. “What a luxury”, said Margaret.

I want to resist falling into that way of thinking. At its best, teaching people who want to learn is exhilarating. I’ve an itch to learn, so perhaps as a student I’ll exhilarate my own teachers. It’s the very least I could do. I don’t even know what the most I can do is.


Sarah Simons works in colleges in the East Midlands, and is the director of UKFEchat. She tweets @MrsSarahSimons

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