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Teacher Retention – What Keeps Me in Education When Better, More Idealistic Teachers have Fled?

Age and experience haven’t made Tom Starkey a more jaded and cynical teacher – but only because, thank goodness, he’s always been that way

Tom Starkey
by Tom Starkey
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It has come as something as a shock to me recently that I am nearing 40. It’s a shock, because my mind is very much convinced that I am still 21 – even though my body is screaming at my mind to pack it in in case I do something daft (like run or jump a bit) that will ultimately and certainly result in my bones crumbling to a fine, chalk-like dust.

I’ve been at this now for nigh-on 15 years (teaching I mean, not this article, although it might feel like that a bit. Shut up.) and I’m no longer the young’un who was closer in age to the students than to many of the staff that I worked with when I started.

This disturbs me greatly as looking back I considered many of my colleagues to be practically ancient at the time.

Yeah, I was young and a tool, so sue me. But now, by some strange and insidious process that I’m pretty sure has only been experienced by me and no-one else in the history of existence, it turns out that suddenly I AM THE ANCIENT ONE!

Absolutely no idea how that’s happened. Massively unfair if you ask me.

Has my fast-approaching dotage bought with it anything that has changed when it comes to my teaching (apart from bits of me that I didn’t know existed popping audibly when I try to write high up on the whiteboard?).

Has the passing of time meant that I have become more jaded and cynical about teaching, learning, schooling and the systems that encompass them all?

Thankfully not.

Whoa now. Before you get all misty-eyed at the prospect of me getting mushy I would like to point out that this is not due to any kind of hugeness of heart or dedication to the cause on my part; the reason I’m not more jaded and cynical now is that I was jaded and cynical as all hell going in.

It’s basically my default state.

In fact, it’s probably that early cynicism (or ‘realism’ as I like to call it) that’s kept me in this game longer than a fair few of my boot-camp buddies who were, by all accounts, much better teachers than I was or ever will be.

So here’s one thing that experience has taught me, and it’s a bitter bloody lesson: idealism can get eaten up in this job and it’s a damn shame when it does.

There often comes a point that the reality of teaching is so far away from what is perceived it should be that there’s no choice but to leave it behind.

Is it the perception that’s the problem? Have all the colleagues I’ve known (good people, good teachers) who’ve packed it in just been too naive to hack it? No, of course they haven’t.

Teaching should be a place where ideals are realised and on its best days, they are.

But it can also be a place of insurmountable pressures. These pressures can get in the way of the ideals we hold to. They can obscure an originally pure purpose, making it seem as though the reasons that we went into this in the first place are far, far out of reach (if there at all).

Should it be like this? Nope. But sometimes it is.

Experience hasn’t made me a cynic, I was a cynic from the start. But what it has done, is ensured that through the lean times, where it all seems like one big joke, I’ve developed a few tricks to get me over the numerous humps I’ve had to stumble over.

And as I advance in years younger members of staff have come to me to ask me if I could share them (as if I’m ancient or something). So now I tell you what I tell them (try to imagine me by a fireside covered with a blanket):

Even when it doesn’t seem like it, there are always small pockets of worth in teaching. You can use them to get you through if that’s what you decide you really want. But you have to make sure that it is what you really want.

Change comes very slowly in teaching and the job will change you a lot quicker than you’ll change the job.

If you decide you can put up with that, then good. And if you decide you can’t, then there’s no shame in that either.

Within callous systems there are always instances of grace and beauty – and in teaching, the light from those instances can shine bright and long. Sometimes it’s transformational. It comes down to what you’re prepared to put up with to see it.

You run along now, young’uns.

Thanks for reading.

Tom Starkey is a teacher and writer who blogs at stackofmarking.wordpress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tstarkey1212.

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