I can picture it now: many teachers, who are full-time class teachers, will be reading the headline of this piece and thinking, “What is there to survive about being out of the classroom? Surely, being in class is where the hard work really is.”
Up until two years ago, I was a full-time class teacher myself, so I do not underestimate how hard it is to have a full teaching timetable, but to say that I’ve found moving to a leadership role where I don’t have my own class a breeze - or even just a bit easier - would be a lie.
It would be fair to say that, at first, I felt a little lost. However, there are some things that have helped me to settle into the assistant head role.
Teach regularly
I love that my new job allows me to get involved with lots of different things, but teaching is still where it’s at for me. More often than not, it’s the best part of my day. Maybe I appreciate it even more now that I don’t teach all day, every day, but it serves to be a daily reminder of what this job is all about: the children and learning. It forces me to not get trapped in meetings, which brings me to…
Go for a walk
A good chunk of my new job involves being in front of a screen, particularly at certain points in the year. For example, if there has just been a data drop, then I know I’ve got some hours of data analysis ahead of me. It’s important to be aware of these points so I can make a conscious effort not to get stuck at my desk for long periods of time. Every morning after I come off the gate, I go for a walk around and check on what’s happening in every classroom. I also try to do this throughout the day. It is useful on so many levels, from being able to support any teachers who need it and helping to get an overview of what is going on across the school.
Diarise, diarise, diarise
Get really good at putting things in your diary. Being out of class and getting involved in different aspects of school means many more meetings to attend and more contact with external organisations. It’s all too easy to schedule in too much at once, or events that clash. I teach every day, so that part of my day is fixed, but the rest is up to me to organise. After years of working to my class timetable, I initially found this overwhelming.
Continue to plan out your day and make sure that everyone has a copy of your timetable, so they can manage their expectations of your time, too.
Balance long-term and short-term goals
When planning my time, it has been very useful to have clear and meaningful performance management targets. They are long-term goals that I return to regularly. In between those are all the things I have to work on in the short term or the completely unexpected things that take up your entire day, so nothing you had planned gets done.
Get to know more children
Without doubt, one of my favourite things about not having a class is the opportunity to get to know all of the children across the school and support their learning. When I was struggling to justify not having my own class to myself, someone pointed out that my new role comes with the potential to have a positive influence over more children than the 30 in my class. This is a sentiment I come back to regularly when the going gets tough.
These days, I am more in the swing of things and I know what impact I’m having. When I was in class full-time, it was all about the outcomes for those 30 children. One of the biggest things to get my head around as a teacher out of class was what my impact should and would look like. It’s a different journey, with different challenges, but ultimately, all roles come back to the same thing: the children. Keep that in mind - and organise your time effectively - and you will make it through the transition.
Claire Lotriet is assistant headteacher at Henwick Primary School in London. She tweets at @OhLottie
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