I’ve been teaching for the last ten years, and spent all of this time at one school. Part of me is ready for new challenges, not being particularly organised I’ve never kept a record of the different projects and developments I’ve been involved with; I’ve tried to summarise my main external activities over the last five years, it’s a stock take, rather then a form of self-promotion.
I think over this period my career has taken three phases
Establishing- at the start of my career I was establishing myself as a teacher, coping with demands that this entails.
Engaging- after the challenges of establishing myself within the classroom, I think I then began to engage with the wider subject community- in part to enhance my practice and as an opportunity to seek external challenges.
Refocusing- external engagement encouraged me to evaluate my practice within the classroom, now that the challenges of establishing myself had subsided, I began to focus on the quality and effectiveness of learning opportunities. During this time internal challenges developed, that I was able to engage with, this somewhat limited the time that I had to work with other external partners.
I now feel comfortable in the role of an ‘educator’, but over the last two years, for personal reasons, I feel I have lost the confidence to engage with challenges both internally and externally, it’s something I hope to rediscover over the next year…
