Heart pounding. Am I ready? What if I have a difficult first class?

I’d been off work for several months, following a freak accident. And now, on my first day back, I wasn’t sure whether I still had what it took. 

My mind was whirring with questions as I approached the school’s reception desk.

Am I really ready to go back to teaching? Do I actually want to teach any more? What if I can’t control - or at least semi-control - a class any more? What if that stare I’ve spent years honing no longer works?  

Questions, questions. Deep breath. Smile at the receptionist.

Five minutes later, with a laptop and timetable in hand, I felt reassured as I marched purposely down the corridor towards the English department.

Bonus: the front desk staff had remembered me; they’d even wondered where I’d been for so long. 

Right, I can do this. English classrooms. I think that I can remember that they are just around this corner here...

The best-laid plans

Six months earlier, I had left this same school on the Friday before half-term in May, looking forward to several days of rest and relaxation, including (weather permitting), a couple of days on one of the South Coast’s beautiful beaches. 

Plus I had had at least three weeks of booked work in the same school after the holidays, so I knew I could relax on the work front as well. 

But, on the Tuesday of the half-term break, after a breathtaking horse ride along the beach, I decided I needed to catch up on some much-needed spring cleaning.

Standing on tiptoe on a metal stool to reach some dusty corners of my flat should have been a fairly innocuous activity. And it was - until the stool wobbled and tipped over, whacking me full on, and leaving me in absolute agony and struggling to move.

A few days of sheer hell later, I gave in and went to A&E. I was duly informed that I had broken a bone and that I was lucky not to have been paralysed.

Shocked and sobered by this news, I was told to rest for two months and not to teach for at least four months.

To be honest though, under the influence of morphine, teaching was one of the last things that I was thinking of, as I struggled to take in the orthopaedic consultant’s words. 

Voracious reading

After a month or so, however, I was able to start gentle swimming, which helped me feel better. With the alleviation of pain and discomfort, came stirrings of boredom and restlessness. So I decided to quell these feelings by reading voraciously.

During this prolonged period of being signed off, I read a diverse range of children’s and YA books including The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge. 

I became obsessed with the 1969 moon landings, and watched and read anything that I could get my hands on.

I read newspapers, education-related articles and academic journals on teaching practices and theories. You name it, I read it. 

The sheer richness of these novels provided many ideas and inspiration for future lessons. And many of the educational articles that I read caused me to start analysing my practice. 

For instance, I began reflecting upon my questioning skills, my use of peer assessment, and my behaviour management. 

One massive CPD session

It’s debatable whether, without this lengthy period off teaching, I would have had the time and headspace to have been able to reflect as deeply as I have on my practice and consider different approaches. 

In the end, my sick leave became one massive CPD and subject-knowledge enhancement course. 

But now I was back, after all that time off, could I put this CPD into practice?

One of my first lessons back was a Year 10 revision lesson, looking at the themes of A Christmas Carol. After my opening question drew blank looks from many of the students, I changed tack with my questioning and tried to model it more on the structure that Barack Rosenshine recommends in his Principles of Instruction. 

And it started to seem to work: slowly but surely, the students begun to identify the themes in the book, and then to understand how these themes are exemplified through the characters.

The following week, during a learning walk, the deputy head popped into a Year 7 lesson, where (fortunately), I was in the middle of fairly ably demonstrating my new and improved questioning techniques. I was later praised by him for my use of questioning in this lesson.

Then, during a Year 9 creative-writing lesson, I was able to incorporate some of the images and language from The Wolf Wilder into a stimulus activity. The students loved the material, and it resulted in some sensitive and detailed responses.

Taking the good from the horror

Phew. It all still seemed to be there. And could it even be that my practice was perhaps a little more refined?

As the weeks progressed, I noticed that instead of being rusty with my classroom management, as I had initially feared, I was clear in my instructions and consistently firm and insistent in my expectations. 

As a result, I felt less strained when dealing with tricky classes than I had in the past. Being faced with potentially difficult classes didn’t seem to be such an issue any more.

My accident was horrific and resulted in a lengthy recovery time. I now have a phobia of standing on chairs or desks, which makes switching on the overhead projector a challenge. 

However, some good has definitely come out of it.

And maybe I have even become a better and more reflective teacher as a result.

The author is a supply teacher in the South of England