The Big Picture

Joe started out on the Physics BSc at the University of Nottingham; “but at the end of my first year I realized I wasn’t very good at labs but I was good at maths, so I switched to physics with theoretical physics”. He enjoyed it so much he moved onto the Masters programme!

Joe started investigating career options towards the end of his fourth year “Looking back, I wish I’d engaged with that process more from an earlier stage, I just didn’t realise the amount of resources that were there.” Joe was steered towards management consultancy and started out his career in a small company. “I’d worked for them while I was at uni kind of part time over summers and things and they saw that potential and the skills I’ve learnt around coding and stuff which is really useful to them as a business. I set up an App for them, things like that. It was good fun, I did that for a couple of years, but I really craved to be more in touch with physics again. The other element was that I was feeling kind of deeply dissatisfied with the impact I was having at a wider level. It just wasn’t the right fit for me”

So, what next? After a bit more thought and investigation Joe decided on teaching through the Teach First route; “They are a charity to end education inequality, so for me it really felt like that culture was a really good fit and I knew I’d be helping people.” The Programme places people in a school for 2 years. Joe completed a few weeks of training, a week long conference and then was straight into teaching. “You need a certain amount of ‘right, I’m gonna stick this out. I’m gonna be committed to this’, but it really is worthwhile. You get to work with just amazing people day in day out.” At the end of the first year you get Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), which means you’ll be on the teacher pay scale from your second year. After the end of the second year you get a PGDE which you can top up to a Masters with some further study if you wish. “You are part of the teach first network as well, which is a really powerful thing to link you informally both for kind of collaborative work as a teacher and as a way of finding out about opportunities”. 

Day to Day

“What I loved coming into Teach First was that there were brilliant people training me who had experience of the job”. Joe was supported by supervisors from the University, a subject tutor, and a Teach First mentor. “And so there’s a contact, usually someone you work closely with in your department, so another teacher or leader, who will be supporting you in school to help understand the school specific context and challenges. It’s a 2 year fixed contract, so there’s no obligation to stay beyond that, and so I think it’s a really good opportunity to try teaching in that respect.” 

“As I’ve got more experience I’ve taken greater control over my day and worried far less about what’s around me and the noise in the environment, and far more on actually what’s best for me and my life circumstances, my family, my students, you know all of those factors, and that’s the beauty of a profession, it’s not like an office job.”

“The first job of the day is just working my way from the oldest email in my inbox to the newest, getting those admin tasks done. If I get disrupted, in the next free moment I’ll just pick that up again. There are, of course, the lessons and so when I first started, it was much more like the night before, make sure I’ve got my lessons straight, print the resources, get it all laid out ready for the next day.  As time’s gone on, there’s much less making of resources because I have them already and I know how I like to teach. It took me probably 4 years until I was getting to the point where I thought you know, I’ve got something for most lessons. Now it’s all about that batching, so rather than have to do the same thing again and again every day, once a week I bring everything, put it in the box, forget about it until I need it. Probably once a year I’ll do kind of a big review of what worked, what didn’t work, so I just make a note of that after every lesson.” 

Next Steps

“You go into these schools that need people who care and people who are quality and you can get opportunities to progress and to broaden your impact very quickly. So in my second year teaching I became second in department. That’s kind of a lower middle leader level, I was given responsibility for driving our curriculum forward. So that was a fantastic opportunity. You’re still very much in the classroom, you’re still on the ground. I really enjoyed it, because for 18 months I’d been seeing these issues, dealing with them on my individual level but then I got the opportunity to broaden that impact. I think a key thing for me was, yes I was early in my teaching career, but I’d done a masters, I’ve done 2 years in a different career, so I found that transition really streamlined.”

After the 2 years: “I wanted to move a little bit closer to home. There are schools everywhere so if you want to move somewhere it’s very easy to find that, simultaneously it’s a great way of seeing different parts of the country, teachers who teach in English are hugely in demand globally. The number of people I trained with who are now working in Dubai, Spain, is huge. I moved to Nottingham University Academy of Science and Technology,  it’s a school literally 200 yards from the School of Physics at the University of Nottingham so I really haven’t moved far in 10 years! And yeah, it worked out really well, I’m still here 5 years later. I actually joined as a teacher of chemistry, because that’s where the need was. But after a year, or so the need was in physics, and so I made that move back to my home subject. And then the head of physics role became available so I applied and secured that job. A normal teacher has 22 hours a week in the classroom and I have 2 hours of that removed, as I have the management duty, so still very much in the classroom.”

“Can’t imagine myself doing anything else! I really do love what I do. I know that I will help more students by serving staff and making their lives better, and actually seeing the culture shift and difference that can make to every student. And the fact that we get paid very well! Pretty much any career you can choose that links to physics skills is going to be in the top 80%. You can’t really go wrong. There’s a lot to be thankful for.”

The Physics Connection

“I feel like I’m constantly using my physics, a big part of my role has been supporting staff with the subject knowledge. And having that university perspective where I’m teaching a level below or a couple of levels below where I got to is really valuable. In student feedback it’s really clear that’s a big part of my value to students and that enthusiasm.”

“I think the biggest problem in teaching is that everyone who is a teacher has been successful in education. The vast majority of students will not be as successful as you in your specialist subject area, 99% are just looking to pass their exams and move on. It’s probably the thing I struggle with most is that I absolutely love my subject. And you know, feedback I get from the students is very much like ‘you’re going beyond the course too much’. But it’s about knowing what your value is as a teacher, what they love about you, and they love my passion, I just have to control that!”