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!
