Bad Teaching

On Role Models
I do not remember having a particular role model in any of my schools. In fact I hardly remember very much of my schooling before the age of 10 years, although, I may have been subconsciously informed.

The Done Thing
When I was at school it was in the 60s and 70s and unfortunately corporal punishment was commonly practiced then. What I do recall are episodes when such punishment was given. Classes were interspersed with painful whacks on the back of the hand with a ruler and worse.

There was one particular teacher who used to punish by making a child stand in front of the whole class while he squeezed the back of its neck, increasing the pressure until the child would go red and start to cry with the pain.

As I grew older I remember being acutely aware of how an adult should not behave. I was never impressed with the displays of bad temper that we used to frequently endure. May be we were particularly unruly, but I don’t think that we were any better or worse than most of the other children of the time. Judging by what I remember my friends and siblings saying, teacher outbursts and frequent use of corporal punishment seemed to be a common experience for most school kids back in those days.

Teaching Today
Today, when I see the primary school teachers teach, I am very impressed with the way they try to gain enthusiasm and enjoyment from the class as a whole. They have a very difficult and tiring job role, but when it is done well, there is nothing like the feed-back and positive responses that they get from the children to spur them on. As an ex performer I’d liken it to being on the stage and doing ‘good out there’.

Learning for Life
I believe that as learning is a life long process and not just something we do at school and then set aside, teachers have a duty to enable youngsters to find pleasure and gain satisfaction from their classes.

Striving to show that it can be both these things at the outset of the educational journey is just as important as learning our ABC and 123.

If just this can be encouraged in the early years then it will hopefully be something that is taken to heart by even the most resilient learner and remembered for life.

Here are turtles - they live for a very long time. All they do is eat and poo. What a life.