Teacher Spotlight #3

Teachers are doing the most important work in the world, but sometimes this message gets lost. We want to share the individual stories of teachers working in secondary education, and give an insight into teaching from the inside.

This week, we caught up with Jeremy, a Maths teacher based in Central London. Have a story you want to share? Get in touch at support@stairwaylearning.com — we’d love to hear from you!

Name: Jeremy Stewart

School: Swanlea School, Central London.

How did you get into teaching?

Well, I’d never actually thought about being a teacher in the earlier years. I only started considering it in the final year of university. However, by this time I already had plans to get a job in the City, and I went directly into a sales job out of university. I knew fairly soon that it wasn’t the right choice for me, as everything was, at it’s core, about making money. This didn’t quite fit with my philosophy, and I was thinking about other opportunities which could be more fulfilling.

I had a friend who was going through Teach First at the time, and spoke very highly of the experience. After a few conversations, I decided to apply myself. In the end, things moved very quickly, and I began my course within 6 weeks of the first conversation! A lot of things were changing for me around this time, but I am now 6 years down the line, and can honestly say that I have no regrets about the decision I made.

What are some of your motivations?

Something that continues to motivate me is those moments of realisation, where I can help students, who have been struggling with something, to finally understand it. I find the process of contributing to students developing and understanding new ideas to be immensely satisfying, and live for the eureka moments where something finally clicks. I am particularly fond of working in small groups, where it is easier to achieve these moments by having a more direct relationship with each student.

These eureka moments can blossom into fantastic results at the end of the year, and this is another point of great satisfaction for me. I take great pride in watching students get the results that they deserve, particularly when they didn’t believe it was possible themselves. With each year of students, we get to know them really well, and being there to experience results day with them is a really rewarding experience.

I also enjoy the challenge of figuring out how my department can improve on a daily basis. There is always work to be done, and things can always be done better. This is a constant journey, and we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can make things better for our students. With the new curriculum in place, this has added another layer of challenge which we have been dealing with over the past couple of years.

What are your thoughts on the curriculum as it stands at the moment for GCSE students?

In general, I think it’s a really positive thing that we have increased the level of challenge in the curriculum. It’s actually hard for me now to imagine that we had a system before which wasn’t at this level, so I’m happy about where we are in terms of the content. Having said this, I’m not so on board with the new grading system; it seems to me like an unnecessary addition which may just be to satisfy higher levels of the hierarchy.

Though the content is moving in the right direction, I think the speed with which it was introduced hasn’t helped with its implementation. We now have students coming through from Primary school who are much stronger problem-solvers, but there has been a lag between these students coming up and the first students to take the new GCSE exams. I think the introduction was rushed, and it was an unfortunate situation for many of the students who were the guinea pigs for the new exams.

I do think that there is a lot to be said for improving our approach to exams themselves. Continuing to do exams on pen and paper is inadequate in many cases, and leaves us with no flexibility in terms of the skills we are teaching. I think technology has a huge part to play in improving our assessment frameworks, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in this space in the future.

That’s a good point! I found out recently that most Computer Science exams are still carried out on paper, and this seems crazy to me. I think this is also the case for Maths and other subjects, as there are so many fundamental and applied skills which technology can enable. It only makes sense, then, to assess students using the same tools that we use to teach.

Where do you think technology has the greatest potential for impact, both in the classroom and outside?

I believe that AI has the potential to, and shortly will, disrupt the education sector significantly. There is a huge amount of potential in a system which is able to understand exactly where student’s strengths and weaknesses are, and design a personalised learning programme for them which is best suited to their learning needs.

This might move the teachers role to more of a facilitator, and enabler of technology. Contrary to some other opinions I have heard, I would welcome this change. Fundamentally, I want my students to succeed, and to have the best chance of achieving their potential in their education. I believe that AI holds the keys to unlocking this for many students, particularly those who struggle in the current system.

Teachers will always have a role alongside technology. It’s unlikely that machines will be able to support the emotional side of the student. Increasingly, the role of a teacher will involve developing the whole student, not just the academic side.

I also think that the development of technology in education has the power to remove our current crisis in the shortage of teachers. By making the more manual tasks automatic, teachers can have a more hands-on approach with each student, where much of the administrative overhead is removed.

As a Head of Year, how much do you consider the need to support the whole child in their learning, taking into account their mental and emotional wellbeing?

Since taking on this role, I have been thinking more and more about this topic. It’s incredibly important to consider these things, as the emotional and academic spheres of learning play into each other heavily, particularly around the GCSE age.

I am very keen to promote independence, and the ability to take the initiative in learning. I want to give students the confidence to be able to solve problems on their own, without needing to wait for a teacher or tutor to solve it for them. This is also where I think technology could be really impactful, in giving students a method of immediate feedback on their learning.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can encourage students to take ownership of their learning.

How do you currently make use of technology in the classroom and home environments with your students?

We use some technology platforms for setting homework and revision. These are useful, as they save much of the time otherwise required to mark and collect data. However, I think there is a lot of potential to develop these systems further, and promote more of a personalised approach to each student.

An issue for many schools is that they don’t have access to the right technology. I think that every student should have access to an iPad in their learning, or something similar, because of all the possibilities that it can bring. Yes, it may cause disruption, but I think the benefits will far outweigh any negatives. I would love to get to this point, and I’m really interested in ways that we can provide the right technology for every school.

Have any thoughts you want to share? We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch via email, or drop us a comment below. If you liked what you read, give us a clap to help more people see it — we’d really appreciate it!