Superteachers. Who are they? I keep hearing about them, wondering if I’m missing something. Can I be one? The perfectionist in me thinks it is a tag worth chasing. All that status, that pride, that recognition.
The chances of this happening, however, are likely to be thwarted firstly by my survival instincts (planning? On a Sunday? Moi?) and then by my general human failings: poor timekeeping, dodgy handwriting, a “loose”
policy on filing - bin it to win it sister - and a liking for cheap celebrity gossip mags (and I mean cheap - if it doesn’t have Kerry Katona on the front cover, I’m not wasting my 50p).
OK, I feel like I’m confessing something here - someone please tell me I’m not alone. I don’t need pity, or in-service training, I just need to know that the wobbly tightrope walk between a well-organised classroom and a well-organised social life is a safe one. I can have the odd lost weekend, feel ropey on a Monday morning and keep the pupils tided over with some silent reading, as long as I redeem myself on Tuesday with a bonanza drama lesson about pirates.
Well, at least this is how I reassure myself when I notice that other people’s planning files look thicker than mine - resulting in a heavy dose of paperwork paranoia. What on earth do they keep in there? Surely that much typeface cannot be useful. And the key question that springs to mind is where do they find the time? Weekends, I suppose. All those pristine file dividers and not a party in sight. They are the Cinderellas of the teaching world. I may not be a paperwork champion, but boy do I have that work-life balance thing down to a fine art. Does this mean I’ll never make it as a superteacher?
To be fair to myself, I actually do some “super” teaching, but I also do some rather mediocre teaching and, if I’m honest, I sometimes do some crap.
This variation has its benefits as a barometer of success. The super lessons would hardly stand out if it wasn’t for all of that middling stuff and the middling stuff wouldn’t feel so... well... middling if it wasn’t for the occasional failure.
And let’s face it, even if every lesson was a certifiable Ofsted-proof “outstanding”, one of the dour-faced nippers would still turn around and tell me: “You’re boring. Science is boring. School is boring. Everything is boring. Apart from WWE SmackDown on the PS2, which is well good.”
Superteacher? I’d rather have a beer.
