What am I looking forward to about my Newly Qualified Teacher year?

What a question. The long awaited first day is nearly here and I feel strangely ready and yet completely unprepared at the same time. Below, I have expanded upon a few things I am looking forward to as I start my first year of teaching.

Ownership

During my training year, I was lucky enough to be taught and mentored by a number of inspiring educators, and spent time in some incredible classrooms. However, by the end of my final placement, I was itching for my own space. I am excited about having the freedom to decorate and manipulate the classroom to suit the way the children learn best, and how I teach best. I am looking forward to having my own cupboards, filled with my own things and a book box with my own collection of favourites in it. Most of all, I am looking forward to having my own year group team who I can build relationships with and, with them, cultivate a positive learning environment for the children.

Accountability

Repeat after me: I am responsible for the progress of these children. This is a rather daunting thought that has wandered into my head at different points over the summer holidays, but it is also a prospect that excites me. I feel ready for the challenge of moving children on in their learning, and want to make that journey an interesting and engaging one, during which we all discover different strengths and weaknesses. Similarly to my feelings about ownership, I got to a place at the end of my training year where I was keen to take up the mantle and think about children’s learning long term, rather than simply the individual lesson I had meticulously planned and resourced.

Community

The schools I worked in during my training year made me feel included and encouraged me to run assemblies and a club but nonetheless, I still felt like a visitor at times. I am looking forward to being part of a team and a community where I can really put down roots, and suggest ideas for extra-curricular activities and projects that I can follow through on. I know that this will make me a better teacher in the classroom, and I like the idea that the children learn a little more about their teachers through the kinds of clubs they run and skills they bring to the table. I am also excited to work with the large network of parents and including them in the classroom and school community, whether that be helping on a school trip or reading a story with the children one day a week.

But finally…

I have talked about three aspects of my forthcoming NQT year, and yet I still feel like the question asked at the beginning is not quite answered. What I am primarily looking forward to are the golden moments that have not yet happened, and that cannot be predicted. For me, I find it helpful to hold onto specific, individual, blink-and-you-miss-them, moments from each day, as it is those that I use to build up a patchwork narrative about why teaching is what I want to do and love to spend my days doing.

During my training year, those golden moments were plentiful in number and varied in colour. They were things like a child putting their book in a higher feedback five pile for the first time, and another deciding they wanted to read a whole story book to the class during story time. Or a flock of 6 year olds gathering round to pet a rowdy puppet parrot, or a child telling the class about the axolotls in his pond during show and tell. They were moments of madness, of tears and of laughter with my fellow trainee teachers, of car rides sat in contemplative silence after a tricky day, or singing our hearts out to the “Greatest Showman” soundtrack after an incredible one.

So when I think about this year and what I’m looking forward to, I want to drill down to the specifics, which I know will happen in one shape or another.

I am looking forward to the stillness that will fall when we discover a good story. When we’re wholly invested in characters and opening up the avenues of our imaginations, simply because we can. To ensure this happens, I promise to read every day.

I am looking forward to the moment a child learns the name of a tree or flower they did not know before. It is so important to me that the children appreciate and connect with the natural world. So I promise to go adventuring in green spaces.

I am looking forward to the time when a parent who was skeptical about my NQT status, begins to trust me. I will make sure I am welcoming and allow for this, and I promise to be honest.

I am looking forward to going into my year group partner’s classroom at the end of a day and being able to offload. And so I promise to listen to concerns, and to not bottle up my own.

I am looking forward to children learning to tell the time on the watch they have worn on their wrist for a year, to them spontaneously being kind to their classmates and peers across the school, and to projects suggested, designed and presented by the thirty explosive personalities who will bowl into the room first thing Wednesday. Most of all, I am looking forward to the adventure.

Good luck to all the other NQT out there as you start your first year. Look for and cherish your golden moments and remember, we are all in this together.

Emily is a primary school NQT

Department for Education

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Official Medium account for the Department for Education, covering education, children’s services, HE & FE, apprenticeships, skills in England.

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