On starting your career as a secondary ECT

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In just over a month a new cohort of early career teachers will be starting their professional teaching careers. Having been in that position this time last year I thought I'd share some tips I think could be useful for ECTs. Although these tips are written from my point of view as a computing teacher several are relevant to teachers of any subject. 

Don't buy anything for your classroom

I've seen quite a lot of posts on Twitter recently asking for advice on things to buy for classrooms. It's fairly bizarre to me that this is even a question that gets asked when in previous jobs I've worked in it would be unthinkable to spend your own money on work tools/equipment. I even once had a manager say to me about the MacBook they'd provided me with "let me know if it's not fast enough and we'll get you a brand new one". Granted, in state education budgets are not quite as plentiful as that but, in my opinion, it is not at all unreasonable to be expected to be provided with everything you need to do your job. 

I theorise it has something to do with the kind of people that train to become teachers. Very often they're kind, generous people wanting to do their best for the kids. There's nothing wrong with that and in fact I'd like to think I fall into that category myself. However it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be using your department's budget for what it's there for: acquiring the tools to enable you to do good teaching. In many cases your department will have a lot of the things you need already. If not, don't go buying the basics; ask your head of department to order it. 

Build a good working relationship with your IT technicians

As computing teachers we're more reliant on support staff than many other teachers. In the same way that science teachers rely on their technicians to support practical work in their subject IT technicians are crucial members of staff that enable teaching and learning in computing. Like a lot of support staff they're often undervalued and underpaid so making an effort to build a good relationship with them, thanking them when they replace a hard drive, reset a password or whatever it might be will go a long way in making your life as a computing teacher easier.

IT technicians in my school have helped me with everything from replacing a keyboard to setting up dedicated user accounts for A-Level computing exams over the last year. Whilst I'm now on holiday, they're still working getting my computer room ready so I can teach effectively come September. Without an effective working relationship with your technicians your job will be difficult/impossible to do well. 

Ask for support when you need it

Part of the job of your mentor, induction tutor and senior leaders in your school is to support you as you start on your career as professional teacher. They should want to hear from you if you're finding something too difficult to deal with alone. Personally in my first year I've asked for support with behaviour in particular classes, support with a parent meeting and advice on how to support SEND students to name just a few things. It's much better to make others aware that you would benefit from some help with something and if leaders are not willing to work with you on it or criticise you for it then you need to start looking for a different school to work at. The shortage of secondary teachers, particularly in computing, means that schools are very lucky if they've got a computing specialist at all. If you're not being supported and valued where you are there are plenty of other schools who'd be delighted to have a computing specialist and would value you and help you succeed.

Your mentor meetings are for you

Personally my mentor and I spent very little time discussing the ECF materials in our mentor meetings this year as it wasn't the most beneficial use of that time for me. It's important to remember that your mentor meetings are for you and you can decide to use that time with your mentor in a way that works best for you. It's a good idea to let you mentor know before a meeting if you have things you want to use that time to discuss as that'll ensure that they're aware of the need to reserve some of the meeting time for those things. As a had the role of subject leader in my first year the most important things to discuss for me were often related to subject leadership tasks that I had not been prepared to do in my ITT year. It will be different for every ECT, make sure you're using your meetings to address the issues that are most pressing for you.

Teaching and learning advice is not gospel 

You'll receive less feedback on your teaching than your ITT year. Nevertheless you'll still get a fair bit from formal and informal observations. When you receive feedback, you should consider the context in which it was given. For example, was it a senior leader coming in for a 10 minute (or less) learning walk? Then they didn't see the other 50 minutes of the lesson and may well have given different feedback had they seen the rest. Or maybe they're not a subject specialist (particularly likely if you're teaching computing or another shortage subject). If this is the case then it's possible they're not familiar with a particular subject specific T&L strategy you've decided to use. 

The advice you receive will be well intentioned and you should be willing to listen to the point of view of the person giving it but you don't have to agree with it. Now that you're a qualified teacher it's for you to develop your own teaching style. Use feedback from others to support this, but there's no requirement to adopt every suggestion you're given, especially as you'll probably be given contradictory advice at some point!

Don't reinvent the wheel

That being said, this advice you definitely should take on board if you want to still be in the profession in a few years time. In teaching it is often said that the job is never done and that's certainly the case when it comes to planning and preparation. It'd be lovely if teachers had a sufficiently light teaching load to prepare bespoke resources for every lesson but that's simply not realistic in secondary education if you don't want to burn out. I'm going into my second year and I have a timetable with 42 teaching hours a fortnight so a crucial action I take to support my wellbeing is making use of high quality resources that already exist. For secondary computing, my top four go to places to look are:

Your department will likely have some kind of online resource store as well. Make use of these to keep the job sustainable for you. Everyone does it and it doesn't make you any less of a good teacher. I can probably count the number of lessons I've taught without some kind of pre existing resource on one hand!