Meet the teacher with the megabit between his teeth

High-flying computer science teacher could be first educator to bring $1 million prize home to Britain
24th February 2017, 12:00am
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Meet the teacher with the megabit between his teeth

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archived/meet-teacher-megabit-between-his-teeth

The British teacher on the final shortlist for a $1 million (£804,000) teaching prize only found the profession thanks to what was, in hindsight, a fortuitous redundancy.

Raymond Chambers has made it through to the last stage of the Global Teacher Prize, with the winner set be announced in Dubai next month. The 30-year-old computer science teacher from Brooke Weston Academy in Northamptonshire has joined a 10-strong shortlist that has been whittled down from 20,000 applications across 179 countries.

But while he’s up for the biggest prize in teaching, Chambers entered the profession only through serendipitous means. While studying for a computer science sandwich degree at De Montfort University in Leicester, and with ambitions to become a programmer, he secured a coding job in 2006 for his placement year.

“Six weeks into it and I got made redundant - the company got taken over and they let go of their student placements,” he recalls.

“But a placement came up at [Lodge Park Technology College] in Corby - they said, ‘We’re looking for a trainee technician,’ so I applied for that and got it.”

After being awarded a first-class degree, Chambers got back in touch with the school to let them know how he’d got on - only to be offered a job as an unqualified IT teacher.

He accepted it and was put through a PGCE at Nottingham Trent University.

“It was all a bit by chance,” he muses. “I’m definitely blessed.”

Chambers’ road to the 2017 Global Teacher Prize started when he began developing new software to make lessons more interesting. This spiralled into a blog, a Twitter account to share his tools and best practice with other teachers, and eventually a YouTube education channel with more than 250,000 views.

He helped the government to draw up its secondary computing quick-start guide for teachers, and the BBC asked him to contribute to its resources for Micro:bit - the pocket-sized codeable computer that has been given to children across the country.

Channelling his talents

He took a group of pupils to second place at a Europe-wide coding competition, won the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert award in 2013-14, as well as a UK national teaching award in 2015.

But while he went into teaching by accident, that’s not to say Chambers didn’t have early pedagogical aspirations - they just pulled in a slightly different direction.

“I always wanted to be an Irish dance teacher,” he reveals.

‘His lessons are quirky, they’re different and innovative’

Chambers has been Irish dancing since the age of 11 and passed his teaching qualification two years ago - so he’s already ticked off that long-standing ambition.

There are definite crossovers with his computer science teaching, he adds: “It’s always about pushing boundaries…giving the dancers new footwork and new footsteps, there’s always something new to learn and it’s a similar approach in school.”

He certainly seems to have brought a high-energy approach into his classroom: a typical lesson will involve Chambers showing pupils how to make a games controller out of bananas. “The students love his lessons,” says Peter Kirkbride, headteacher at Brooke Weston. “They’re quirky, they’re different, they’re innovative, they’re active.”

Fostering digital citizenship

So if he wins, how does Chambers expect to spend the money?

“I’d like to support computing in schools… to help raise the profile of computer science and help support other teachers in any way I can,” he replies.

Helping young people navigate the sometimes treacherous waters of the online world is another passion he’d like to devote more time to - he already gives students lessons on “how to look after themselves online and how to be a good digital citizen”.

“I’d like to maybe start a charity or some work that helps raise awareness of [the] social media anxiety that a lot of students feel,” he says.

“There’s been a lot of research into the impact that’s having on learning at the moment. If there’s any way we can make students more aware of it, that would be good.”

‘The students said, “If you win, will you take us out for a meal?”’

Highly commendable ideas, then, but his students have other, more self-interested suggestions. “They’ve said, ‘If you win, will you take us out for a meal?’” he laughs.

Chambers says he cried when he received his national teaching award two years ago: “I was like, is this happening to me?”

If he goes all the way in Dubai, he says onlookers should be prepared for a similar reaction. “I’m a big crier, I’m not ashamed to say that…I’ll probably break down and thank everybody I know!”

He adds: “It’s a bit surreal, if I’m honest…you do the job and you don’t expect that level of recognition.”

If he becomes the first UK teacher to bring home the Global Teaching Prize next month, British teachers will no doubt forgive him any Oscars-style waterworks.

@whazell

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