Owning the title former teacher

Rather un eventfully I left teaching April 2022. I don't know what I had planned for the event but it ended up being an email to senior leadership saying enough was enough. Truth is, I probably, had left the classroom long before, I had done a year as a zero hours evening class teacher, before that I had done 3 years as an evening class teacher on secondment. Actually the last time I think that was a 'teacher' teacher was probably 2017. When I shared with pals that I was leaving (for good this time) I shared that I felt a bit of a fraud having only been a zero hours teacher for a year. That in my head, because I wasn't working all day every day in the classroom I was less of a teacher. There were some interesting debates with friends. Some took the view that I was still putting the same love and attention in to my one class and having wider impact with my other work, some dismissed the idea saying once a teacher always a teacher, some said think of the ones you have taught.

I debated all of this and some! Why did I have this dilemma? In 2018 I became an advanced practitioner, a teacher who coached other teachers. To keep me fresh I still taught one class a week on an evening. That's the beauty of FE, there is always an evening class that needs a teacher! The plan for this was that I would practice what I preached to the teachers I was coaching and they could observe me anytime doing all the amazing things I was coaching them through. This meant that I should have been putting Ofsted levels of planning into that 1 class a week. Let's be honest, I wasn't. I had a lot on in my other role, and whilst these lessons were well planned, they weren't gold plated. The theory was also that I would still be viewed as one of them, one of the teachers that I was coaching, on their level, I could say, "I get it" 

I would like to apologise now to those teachers who I coached and who I said this to. Whilst I 'got' teaching and learning, and I still do, my one class a week was not significant enough for me to position myself with other teachers. Truth, most of my week was spent training, coaching and mentoring and very little time went into my alleged Ofsted level planning. So I wasn't the same, I wasn't in the team meetings hearing the same messages, I was an outsider parachuted in to cover that evening class who left after class. I wasn't there when someone had to cover reception at the community site. I wasn't there when they had a deep dive by SLT. I wasn't there when there was an attendance problem with students. No doubt I was having impact across larger teams in my role, my role was enjoyable and I saw progress with my coachees. But I was not a teacher the same as them, had I exited the classroom?

Let me tell you about being a zero hours teacher. No, it's not the same as being employed. The Christmas just eat voucher that HR give out from SLT is only for employees, not zero hours employees. The well being day that you can take is only for employees, not zero hours employees. The payroll who can, and do, kick back your time sheet and don't pay you because of a typo when you are zero hours. Yet employees who are salaried are always paid. All of this breaks my heart for others who are zero hours. My situation was very different. I had my own self employed work and was financially stable. I genuinely was still teaching for the love of teaching. It certainly wasn't for the salary. The salary was 50% less than my salary when I was an advanced practitioner and I know (and appreciate) that the zero hours pay I got was very generous too. Again I know how fortunate I am that I was able to combine my love of teaching with my self employed work. Fortunate that circumstances worked out and that I had my reputation from being an advanced practitioner as well was there being an evening class that always needed covering. 

Now, this past year as a zero hours teacher has been wonderful, in my virtual classroom. I have had such good times with my students. I have adored almost every second of it. I have enhanced my teaching digitally in a flipped/asynchronous style. My students have their work up front, at the start of the week, the morning after their evening class. This is a form that branches out depending on their responses. If they're ok with the topic (these are resitters) they get some questions, if they need help they get a video from me or another one I have curated from YouTube. My students have a choice of how they learn and when they learn. I think of it like each chalk and talk episode I would do in the classroom is a form, with a task built in for them to complete. The tasks are all self marking and then I ask for a student reflection on how they felt that it went. Each episode is linked together in one overall doc and if this is complete before the end of the timetabled class they are marked positively for attendance.

I have blogged about this before if you want to learn from my years 1 and 2 iterations here (link1 link2 link3 link4 link5 link6 link7). I then host a workshop live in the timetabled slot. This is shorter than the timetabled class as there are bookable one to ones as well on offer. If the forms are complete it is optional for students to come to the workshop. This also means that if students have ignored my work and attend live they can get the gist of what's been going on and return to the work post workshop or part way through too. Some students arrive for 10 minutes ask for a specific example explaining and leave. Some students attend the whole thing piecing together where they went wrong in the forms from their weeks work and some students come some weeks and not others. It has worked for 2 years. I have taught 3 cohorts this way over 2 years. I have done action research on it which I shared at ALT and I was doing more research in it as part of my MA. Obviously I'm not now as I have no sample as I have left! So had I left teaching when I became zero hours?

One student has never attended live apart from mock assessments where they heard my pleas and joined the call live. Every week their work was completed day 1 and the screenshots of their self marking tasks showed it was all correct. Their mock results were amazing, grade 5s and I really should have put them in for higher (but that's a whole other tale). This student also weekly appeared in my emails with negative comments from other tutors, late, no work, poor attendance notifications. These were always followed up by SEND team replies reminding other tutors of this students EHCP. This student had been at college previously and had sat maths and done worse than they had at school. Before I left I asked for a chat with this student. They obliged and on the call they appeared with their parents. Their parents explained that the student struggled with anxiety when on live calls and thanked me for never pressuring them to attend live. I explained my job is to find a way that it works for everyone as much as possible and where I can flex I always will.

FE maths is often the least popular subject in college. The one most students have to do but they really don't want to do. In this example the parent was telling me maths was their highlight. I asked the student why they liked maths and they replied, they don't. They hate it. Standard FE response I thought. They said what they liked was that I was respecting the challenges of the way that they learn and by allowing them to study at their own pace, at home, take breaks, revisit tasks and not be dragged to a live session face to face or online was what they enjoyed. I may have turned my camera off as I may have had a wet cheek from tears at this point. I asked about previous attempts at GCSE, I am always fascinated why it hasn't worked before and how can we make it work this time, it's always a question I ask! The student explained that they had never sat a full exam, they had reacted negatively to being in the exams before and either been removed or left after 10minutes. So the question then was, how do we make it better this time? The student had no answers other than that they would try. I made a promise to try too; to try to get all the forms for the rest of the years topics scheduled on Google classroom before I left. We had a deal. I wrote this before the date of the exam but I have heard from the SEND team that the student is still watching if I will keep my promise of scheduled asynchronous tasks and if so, they will keep theirs and try to sit the exam. (All the tasks are written and scheduled!)

So when did I stop being a teacher?

The other week when I had this call and left my current class. I think I was a teacher all along, just not as in it as full or part time classroom teachers. The level of work is similar but I accept I escaped the pressures of being in the building all the time. Yet the pressures of being zero hours and having to chase emails and attendance in your own time are significant I would argue, but different.

I am not still a teacher, I have now left teaching. Even though my scheduled tasks continue! But I will proudly wear the badge of former teacher, supporting those still teaching where I can!

AP connect and me

Let's start with where I was at professionally back in 2019. I was a brand new Advanced Practitioner (AP) in a large college group supporting teaching and learning with an EdTech focus and was 2 years into the role. Problem was I had taken 9 months off for maternity leave. Work, as in immediate team, had been great, really helped me out. But I have to be honest my confidence was low. Sure, I had become an AP but quickly that impostor had crept in and then I had gone off. I was just coming back and I was asked to apply to AP connect. Detailing my aims for being on the project and how I plan to share my work. That application was a task in itself that took me some serious thinking to do. I remember being in a park with my kids writing it on my phone. The epitomy of mum life.

I was accepted onto AP connect whilst on maternity and when I returned I was asked to catch up. The overwhelm was more overwhelming than an overwhelming overwhelm you have ever seen! I had a frantic call with one of the programme leads to catch me up and as brilliant as that was I was very much overwhelmed. Like I said my immediate team had been brilliant and my colleague invited me in to what he was doing and slowly I was grasping the part I could play. Then I was asked to go to a full day conference for AP connect in Birmingham, not local! I'm not going to lie, the stress of juggling baby, toddler, work and travel meant I was exhausted long before the day! The day came and the most horrendous weather came (people trapped in floods as in trapped in shopping centres) and all I wanted to do was go home. But my colleague was a real pro at managing and helping me through my wobbles and off we went. 

I arrived to meet Dr Lou Mycroft and a hug. A real hug, then and there I could have quite easily broken down and needed a million people to piece me back together. The day was brilliant from then on in. Power and influence analysis of our teams and organisations. How can we, as APs, lead and influence? Where can we research and reflect on our practice or the practice we are observing in others? What are the elements of an AP role? Then I met the thinking environment. Where everyone thinks as equals. Role, rank and ego are left at the door. We used it to explore an issue an AP was having and how we might help them resolve it. It was there, in that moment, that I knew why I was on AP connect. I was there to use my voice to help others, that was my role, and AP connect was giving me the tools to do that.

My confidence grew as I had new tools to adopt when I returned. It grew even more when APs asked for video calls with me to share what I was doing at our college and other APs wanted to learn from us. My confidence grew in that I knew I had a network of people that I could ring and ask that daft question to. The questions I didn't dare ask at work! Also the questions where I could anticipate my colleges response and actually I wanted to know another college's response to use in driving that conversation at work. I began using social media. As a total novice my colleague created a team account for us. Told you he was great at helping me. My confidence was growing but no way was it high enough to do social media, what did I have to share that was of note?

Social media grew and that network of colleges grew. As did my confidence again. AP connect had sparked something in me. Sparked so much that when Google innovator applications came around I put one in, me, I put an application in! I was selected (there were 75 ish globally that year) had I not done Google innovator I would never have ended up working in EdTech as a freelancer and had I not done AP connect I would never have applied for Google innovator! Social media grew again from this and I learned about #JoyFE. I became part of JoyFE. Actually without realising I had met some of JoyFE face to face at AP connect in Birmingham! 

JoyFE is a group of educators changing education, focussed on bringing joy. Weekly, the thinking environment happens in an ideas room. That Wednesday weekly ideas room was the place I could explore some of my ideas, how I wanted to do things at work, and others would help shape and form ideas. Sometimes people wanted to collaborate on ideas and next thing I knew I was in other colleges speaking and or training on maths or EdTech. I wouldn't have been able to do this had I not joined JoyFE and I wouldn't have heard of nor had the confidence to join were it not for AP connect.

We then arrive in 2022 (I feel like 2020-2022 blur and merge for me) and I was taking the decision to leave my college and go freelance. As a nervous soul this was a huge deal. But what I knew was that my values didn't align with the work I was being asked to do. I knew that others valued my opinions externally. I knew that I had changed what I could at college and that I could have wider impact as a freelancer. How did I know all these things? I knew them because I had learned from AP connect about influence and power. I was able to recognise my high influence externally, low influence internally and the power of my college and the limited ability I had to make any more changes. I had learned to find my voice. I had learned on AP connect the power of networks and collaboration. So that was it freelance was the life for me.

Early in my freelance days Joss from Touch Consulting (delivery partner on AP connect) called me to ask me to work with Touch Consulting. Not only was this a yes as it was one of my first interested parties but it was an easy yes as I knew my values aligned. We worked on some projects and I was eternally grateful to be working with a team that held the same values and worked in a joyful manner. Then I was asked to work on AP connect. Me, a graduate of the programme, to now facilitate it. What a perfect circle. I often say AP connect made me, me! I could now share this with new APs.

My mentees were from all over the UK and we happily bundled straight in to easful conversations. I am a person who if a DM comes in I get quite stressed. Yet the DMs from mentees were joyful. Me, they were asking, me for ideas and support. Of course I would love to help. 6/7pm phone calls to help APs navigate tricky situations. Facilitating the Festival Fridays schedule and booking inspirational speakers to share, all joyful experiences.

But this is where AP connect is truly brilliant. What did I learn as a facilitator on the programme? I learned that the stress I feel in time pressure situations dissippates when values align. If what you are doing, is really helping someone, I don't mind if that's taken my evening, made me break off from a project to take a call or led me to an email chain of epic proportions. It doesn't cause me stress when it is helping someone else. I also learned that if you ask, people often say yes. I approached some big names for the festival Fridays workshops and everyone said yes to me. They said yes because they too could see the values of AP connect. The values that everyone is learning collaboratively always.

This year's mentees projects ranged from coaching at work to embedding maths to action research. I adored and absorbed it all! One mentee made specialist resources for students with additional needs. All these APs were, and always, go the extra mile. So it is sad that AP connect has ended, sad that I will no longer be involved, but that is a selfish sad. It hasn't ended as a way of working, networks are established, slack channels are launched, APs want to and will keep connecting and collaborating. APs are still and will continue to drive change in their organisations. Us old mentors are only a DM away. That collaborative rhizomatic way of working continues when values align.

I firmly belief AP connect made me who I am today. Showing me where my values lie, giving me the tools to make changes. Helping me find my voice and grow in confidence. I am very pleased I was able to play a small part this year and set others on this path too. Long live AP connect.

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