Conquering Classroom Challenges!

Teaching is a lifelong and rewarding profession that gives you the opportunity to influence children for generations to come. Nevertheless, teachers come face to face with challenges every day and this was no exception for me on my work placement at Laurelhill Community College. Due to the nature of the teaching profession, every day in school will pose educational and pastoral challenges that educators must be capable to manage appropriately. Lucy Waide states that “challenges allow us to become more skilled in problem-solving and ultimately a better teacher,”[1] therefore, any challenges that I faced during my placement have equipped my teaching toolbox with essential skills that will ultimately assist in any challenges that I may come up against when I become a teacher.

Overall, throughout this blog, I will effectively utilise Gibbs’ reflective cycle as a tool to reflect upon several challenges that I faced during my time at Laurelhill Community College. Gibbs’ six steps will enable me to deliver a clear description of each challenge, reflect upon how they made me feel, critically evaluate, and analyse each situation before concluding and drawing up an action plan for future experiences.

Challenge One

Due to only completing my A-Levels and leaving school in June 2019, an initial challenge that I encountered at the college was the narrow age gap between myself and the GCSE and A-Level pupils. Being a 21-year-old, the age gap between myself and the upper sixth students was only three years in some circumstances, this slim age difference resulted in lacking confidence when teaching and instilled feelings of anxiety as I was worried that the students were judging my teaching ability or wouldn’t respect me the same way they would an older member of staff at Laurelhill Community College. To overcome this challenge, I referred to Tom Bennett’s book ‘Teacher’ where he describes his first experience of teaching, stating that it “turned my guts to ice to think about facing a group of teenagers.”[2] Additionally, with just leaving school education three years ago, it initially took time to grow accustomed to the school environment from the teacher’s point of view – with time and persistence, this challenge became less impact on my placement.

Challenge Two

The second challenge that I came up against very early on in placement was the lack of motivation, engagement, and confidence that the pupils had, in relation to schoolwork and lesson participation. Having identified this challenge and addressing it with the class teacher, I was in shock to see that GCSE and A-level drama students had no passion or enthusiasm for the subject. This was a challenge for me when I was taking workshop activities because pupils simply did not want to engage with practical work and instead preferred sitting on their seats on their phones, essentially completely removing themselves from the classroom. This is not surprising as it has been reported in recent government research that “many students reported dips in motivation”[3] due to their remote learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, to overcome this apparent lack of engagement, motivation and enthusiasm for students, I focused on producing and providing engaging activities and workshops in which the students could in turn further their knowledge for Drama and participate more beneficially with lesson content. I placed pressure on myself to create workshops and activities that were engaging in a hope that it would encourage pupil participation within the Drama department at Laurelhill Community College and it was rewarding to see pupils begin to engage in the lessons as my placement progressed.

Challenge Three

The third and final challenge that I experienced was one that I did not expect, however, I have gained great pastoral understanding and knowledge from it. Upon entering the college, I was informed by the pastoral care team that sadly a year 12 pupil had suddenly passed away three weeks before the new school year got underway. It just so happened that I was teaching the year 12 form class that this specific pupil was from and therefore when approaching and planning lessons I had to do so with caution and care. This challenge taught me about the core pillars of education, one of which is pastoral care and at Laurelhill “our pupil centred pastoral care system strives to break down the barriers to learning by putting in place programmes and support to develop your child’s social and emotional needs.”[4] It was essential for me as an outsider to the school to approach this group with as much respect as possible, as I know how much death can affect people both mentally and physically. Observing the pastoral work of Laurelhill Community College in action with this group of students gave me so much insight into how to appropriately apply pastoral care to pupils and opened my eyes to strategies to support children in relation to their mental health. Although this experience in Laurelhill Community College was an initial challenge, it was extremely rewarding to see the progress of the students within the college.

Future Action Plan

Overall, the challenges that I faced throughout my placement have been a huge eye-opener to the daily challenges that teachers face. In terms of a future action plan, Mike Fleming explains the difficulties that come with anticipating “how a class will react in a given situation and it is, therefore, difficult to reduce any form of teaching – let alone drama teaching, which tends to be more open-ended and inclined to risk taking.”[5] With this in mind, I endeavour to undertake extensive planning to cover each classroom challenge that I may face in teaching practice. I have created the five P’s within my future action plan to assist me when tacking future classroom challenges, as I believe that planning for all eventualities, promoting enthusiastic learning, pushing persistence in learning, passionately striving towards professionalism and providing the highest quality of pastoral care is the key to being a successful teacher.

Foot Notes

[1] Lucy Waide, So You Want to Be a Teacher? How to Launch your Teaching Career (London: Continuum, 2008), p.1-11, (p.5).

[2] Tom Bennet, Teacher: Mastering the Art and Craft of Teaching (London: Continuum, 2012), p.79-95, (p.85).

[3] GOV.UK, Learning during the pandemic: review of research from England (2022) <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/learning-during-the-pandemic/learning-during-the-pandemic-review-of-research-from-england> [accessed 4 March 2022].

[4] Laurelhill Community College, Laurelhill Community College: Learning and Achieving Together (2022) Available at: <https://www.laurelhillcollege.org> [accessed 4 March 2022].

[5]  Michael Fleming, Teaching Drama in Primary and Secondary Schools: An Integrated Approach (London: David Fulton Publishers Ltd, 2001), p.41-56, (p.55).

Bibliography

Bennet, Tom, Teacher: Mastering the Art and Craft of Teaching (London: Continuum, 2012)

Classcraft, The 3 main challenges teachers face in today’s classroom (2022) <https://www.classcraft.com/blog/3-main-challenges-teachers-face/> [accessed 4 March 2022]

Fleming, Michael, Teaching Drama in Primary and Secondary Schools: An Integrated Approach (London: David Fulton Publishers Ltd, 2001)

GOV.UK, Learning during the pandemic: review of research from England (2022) <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/learning-during-the-pandemic/learning-during-the-pandemic-review-of-research-from-england> [accessed 4 March 2022]

Laurelhill Community College, Laurelhill Community College: Learning and Achieving Together (2022) Available at: <https://www.laurelhillcollege.org> [accessed 4 March 2022]

Waide, Lucy, So You Want to Be a Teacher? How to Launch your Teaching Career (London: Continuum, 2008)

WebStockReview, Motivation clipart project time (2022) <https://webstockreview.net/explore/motivation-clipart-project-time/> [accessed 4 March 2022]