By Matthew Jenkin, The Guardian
Headteacher Stephen Drew found fame in a Channel 4 documentary but it’s the power to change the lives of children which defines him as a teacher.
Young people are fantastic, interesting and exciting, says headteacher Stephen Drew. Photograph: Cleverbox
I wasn’t one of those people who grew up wanting to be a teacher. It wasn’t something that was in my mind all the time as I was growing up. I did my A-levels, went to college, did my degree, but I got to the third year of my history politics degree and didn’t have a great desire for one thing or another. I had friends who had gone into teaching and, after speaking to them, it became very clear that it definitely was something that appealed to me. But I still wasn’t ready so I deliberately decided at the end of my degree not to immediately do my teacher training. I very much wanted to do something else first so I spent the nine months before my PGCE managing a pub in Alexandra Palace, north London.
If I want to do something, I put my mind to it and do it. There is a very fine line between arrogance and self-belief, but I was never scared to be in the classroom. I remember in my very first PGCE lecture, the lecturer stood at the front and said: “These children get one chance at education.” You as a teacher can go back and do it again the next day or next year. But they get one chance. That’s their only day. They can’t have it again. It really convinced me that teaching was something I wanted to do.
Teenagers are never, ever boring. Young people by their very definition are fantastic, interesting and exciting. They are never going to bore you in any way, they are always going to be challenging. The very nature of being a teenager is that you are finding out who you are. You are defining your personality and characteristics. That means that you, as a teacher, have to challenge them. It means you have to justify what you do and make sure that you are doing the right thing, that you are ensuring the children are on the right path.
I work for the children. They are my bosses and employers. I don’t work for the governors, I don’t work for the parents, I don’t work for the Department for Education or Ofsted, I work for the students. For me, the children come first in every single thing that I do. Everything I do is for their benefit. Therefore, you must act in a way that will only give the best possible outcome for the children. That defines what I do as a teacher.
Read the full article by Matthew Jenkin from the Guardian.
