The Student Who Taught Me.
How teaching works both ways.
“To this end, the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher.” — John Strachan
In my earlier piece here on Medium I spoke at length about how important it was for teachers to help students access their potential, and how I had been inspired by two teachers. The above quote really does hit the nail on the head when proving how important teachers are to the climate and success of a school.
However, the impact that students can have on teachers is just as important. Some children will shape a career and change your teaching style. Perhaps there is that one student who will just always stick with you for being an inspiration, or perhaps you reflect and realise you didn’t handle a student in the best way you could. Whatever it is, it definitely isn’t just teachers that inspire and teach students, learning works both ways.
Turns out I think that the student who has most profoundly impacted my career as of yet was a ten-year-old I worked with in my first job in a school. She didn’t just affect how I viewed myself as an educator, but also as a person. I learnt from her that education is about so much more than just teaching, it is also a safe space and a space of growth for many children. This was something that I had never understood whilst I was in education. However, the biggest lesson that working with this student taught me is who I was. Working with her changed the way that I saw the world, and what I wanted to do with my life.
Let’s go back to the beginning of how I had this realisation. The year is 2021, I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed as I walk into my first grown up job. I say that because previously I’d worked at a hotel restaurant which only hired teenagers (and losers), a tearoom which I quit after having a panic attack at the bus stop one day, and a garden centre where I lasted two weeks before covid hit. My track record wasn’t great, and to be honest work gave me a lot of anxiety, which is what I put the poor job performances down to. So, here I am, walking through the doors of the school I’ll soon come to know as a second home.
Whilst I learnt a lot in my first year at this job, I recall taking a while to settle in and find my footing regarding what my job consisted of. There were lessons to be learnt in the everyday and it cemented in me that I wanted to work in education. (Yes, some may call me crazy, but it’s true! I really liked my job.) That first year working there I got to know a SEND child, let’s call her Amie for the purpose of this article, she took to me positively on a school trip once and we formed a strong bond. This was something upper management noticed and so they paired me 1–2–1 with her in my second year working there.
Amie had a form of autism which meant that her attention span was about as short as my patience when cooking (for reference, that is an extremely small amount of patience). But that wasn’t all, there were several quirks Amie had; locking herself in ‘safe’ spaces (which were incredibly unsafe), doing the opposite of what was asked of her, and occasionally becoming physical. These are just a few of many.
In our first few months working together I felt like we were making progress and we understood ech other, this is something I’ve realised is key when working with a child. If you don’t understand them and aren’t on their wavelength then a pairing is doomed. We almost formed something of a friendship which was helpful when working with Amie. Of course, working closely with a child can create a close bond, which comes with complications, and at nineteen having never worked in a school before there were bound to be struggles. In hindsight I wasn’t equipped enough to look after her and didn’t have the full bandwidth to take on her emotions.
Like I mentioned, you almost become friends with a child when you work this closely with them. It’s hard to teach children that you’re a staff member and not necessarily their friend. When it came to discipline, she wouldn’t follow, and it would become difficult to work with her. Suddenly your ten-year-old best friend has become your ten-year-old enemy. (Of course, this is not literal, however it really can be difficult for SEND children to differentiate between adults being their teachers and their friends, which can lead to a difficulty in working together, and I feel like this was a case of that.)
After about three months of working with Amie she began to struggle again, both mentally and educationally. This never had an obvious reason, we thought it may be because she was stressed about her upcoming move to high school. Her struggles meant much more discipline was needed and at times it felt like we were working against each other, rather than with each other as we had been before. I became increasingly frustrated because I spent every day making sure that this child was well equipped, and looked after, and given the best possible outlook, and this was only met with an attitude. It was constantly becoming more taxing for me, and there were times when I found it hard to want the best for Amie because all I got was pushback from her. I found myself with growing resentment for this child.
Towards the end of my time working with her we managed to find our way back to a space that was workable. We managed to find a space where we could work together gain rather than against each other. When I left that job, I knew that I would cherish the time I had with Amie, however I also knew that the lessons I’d learnt would stick with me for a long time.
Nowadays, when I look back and reflect upon my time working with Amie I can see I learnt so much about myself. The eighteen months where I worked with her shaped me into who I am today, they were perhaps the most important eighteen months of my life. Some of the people I met when I worked at that school have been the most influential in my life, however none more than that ten-year-old. Working with Amie showed me what I wanted to do with my life, and the kind of people I wanted to help, and how profoundly I could affect and change some children’s lives. The people and children I met at that job made the classroom a learning space for me as well as the children, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.
I wanted to share a snippet of my time working with Amie to show what the education system can do for teachers and students. We all impact and change each other, and it is such an incredible space to have gotten to work in. For any staff members in the education sector, I feel we will all have that one student that sticks with us, and perhaps that student is the one that will teach us the most about ourselves as educators. For me, that was Amie.
