For now at least, all that is relevant about me is the following:
I work in a state secondary school, rated Ofsted 'good', as a teaching assistant.
"Pfff, 'teaching assistant'" you sigh with snobbish disappointment, dismissively hovering your cursor over the browser search bar, ready to check out a different, 'better' education blog. "Why should I bother taking the time to read this - the stories and reflections of someone who isn't even a real teacher - when I struggle enough as it is to sift through the thousands of more qualified and more experienced (and therefore more authoritative) teacher-bloggers that are out there?"
Well, if you're still with me, let me tell you...
1: As a teaching assistant I am perfectly positioned between teacher and student to understand the needs, ambitions and challenges of both parties better than any other member of staff in the school. This is not an arrogant self-judgement but merely a fact of my role. True, the school counsellor might be better informed (on paper at least) as to the details of exactly what is going on inside the head of troubled little Johnny, or for that matter what is happening at home that is causing him to be so troubled. And true, the headteacher undoubtedly has a better idea of the pressures faced by each classroom teacher - their exam targets, planning expectations, observation feedback etc. But when a student mutters under their breath as they leave the classroom after a particularly bad lesson that they 'fucking hate school', and then less than 5 minutes later their teacher complains in the staff-room that said student is 'such a pain in the arse', I can confidently say that I am the only one to have witnessed the hour-long build-up to this shared feeling of frustration from a truly neutral perspective, or rather from both perspectives. For I will have spent at least some of those 60 minutes sat at a desk with the kids, suffering with them the boredom of an un-engaging lesson and an uninspiring teacher, and equally I will have stood at the front with the teacher looking out over a tumultuous sea of provocatively disruptive and aggressively reluctant teenagers, trying desperately to cajole them into work whilst simultaneously teaching them what it means to be a decent person. That is what I mean when I say I am perfectly positioned to understand both sides.
2: Add to this the fact that I happen to be closer in age to the kids I help than the teachers I work with and I think I am fairly unique within my school, at least in so much as I am employed in a position of authority but can often better sympathise with the kids over whom I am meant to exercise that authority than the teachers who confer it upon me. I can still remember exactly what it felt like to be stuck in school, I still find it funny when a student intellectually undermines a teacher, and I can certainly better empathise with a 15 year old who has just broken-up with their first boy/girlfriend than a 35 year old who is having a new kitchen fitted in their first marital home.
3: I haven't been in the teaching game long. Surely that just means I'm inexperienced? No it doesn't. (Well, yes, admittedly it does mean I'm inexperienced, but there's more to it than that.) It means I do have an understanding of the demands and challenges faced by teachers, but I have not yet grown accustomed to classroom apathy and commonplace disrespect for authority; I have not yet accepted the unnecessary tedium of jargon-filled INSET sessions that tick the CPD box but little else; and I have not yet been brainwashed by the widespread belief that learning objectives, success criteria, coloured-pen marking and modelled answers are the key to effective teaching. (By the way, apologies - in a 'sorry, not sorry' kind of way - if you hold that belief because some of what you read here will challenge it.)
4: When was the last time you listened to someone like me? I'm a teaching assistant, I'm young, and I'm new to the profession. It never hurts to hear another point of view does it?
