What is the best thing about working in the private school sector? For me, it is not having to religiously follow the British curriculum and listen to people with no teaching experience telling me how to run my classroom. Could you imagine walking into surgery and telling the doctor how he could improve on his technique for his latest myocardial infarction patient? It is a ridiculous notion and while a little exaggerated not a million miles away from what teachers in the UK have to deal with everyday.
I am all for self-improvement and I absolutely welcome criticism from other teachers. I actively seek advice from my peers and despite being apparently classed as an “outstanding” teacher by my previous Head, I don’t consider myself any more than satisfactory. I doubt myself every single day and look for ways to improve after every lesson. But, if you have not set foot in a classroom before, then please, please, don’t tell me how to do my job.
I have worked in international schools for most of my career and I could not see myself ever returning to the UK to work in a government school. The job isn’t the only reason why I chose to live overseas. I love travelling and seeing new things, however it is the politics of working in UK schools that keeps me from returning. The children that I teach here are from good backgrounds and more often than not have supportive parents. The children at home in the UK often need good quality teachers so much more, but unfortunately the people in charge are driving the best teachers away. More and more people are not just leaving the country to teach elsewhere, but are leaving the teaching profession altogether.
I am lucky enough to be in the private sector overseas and I have always fostered ideas and teaching philosophies that break the norms of how we are taught to teach. I am somewhat of a rebel in this sense, often going against suggested practices for teaching. I like to be provocative and critical of traditional ways. I certainly wouldn’t get on well with the politics involved with teaching in the UK and while I had the respect and trust of my Head teacher in my last school; who allowed me to bend the rules to some extent, I have always wanted to be my own boss and set up a school in my own vision. I have, for a long time, thought that I could structure a curriculum in a better, more practical way, giving time back to teachers to simply do the job they love doing for the reasons they initially decided to join the profession.
Although Private schools on the whole do offer teaching staff more freedom to teach in the way that they like, slightly removed from the policy makers, they do come with their own pitfalls. I work in Thailand where most of the schools are owned by rich business people rather than educators. Profit making is put above the needs of students and children with special needs don’t exist in the mainstream schools. It is an environment built around a “bums on seats” philosophy. Working abroad can also leave you stuck with Head teachers and other teachers that have become far too accustomed to the easy life and don’t work half as hard as they should. It can become frustrating. Expectations abroad are often not as high as they are in the UK, but at the same time we, as teachers, have a duty to do the best job that we can, helping as many children in our care to achieve their absolute potential in both their academic and social lives. This is obviously not the case in all schools and there are some wonderful teachers around.
Luckily I have a close colleague who is very like-minded. Our teaching philosophies are almost identical and he is a fantastic teacher. I have never seen anyone teach phonics as well as him, even to this day and that is why almost four years ago, I felt confident enough to partner with him to start our own school. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to follow whatever curriculum we want, to be able to buy whatever resources we want, when we want and to be able to educate young children in the way that we feel is the best way. Our school is only an Early Years institution and we did start on a pretty tight budget, borrowing from our families and scraping together our savings, however being built on the back of our modern and progressive philosophies, it has now blossomed into a school of the very best quality.
Taking children from as young as twelve months in the Nursery and up to six years in Kindergarten 3 (Year 1), by the time children leave our school, they are all able to read and write both in Thai and English and in fact most of the children typically work one year above the national literacy and maths levels set by the UK national curriculum. My highest ability child has just turned five years and has already achieved a 3C in English.
So how did we achieve this? Through pushing the children to their limits? Breaking their personality through gruelling work routines? Surprisingly neither of these methods were used. The key to our success lies in teaching children to love education. We don’t punish children by getting them to read books or practice handwriting, but rather we teach children to love books and reading is a reward for finishing other activities quickly. We learn through playing “party” style games, whereby the children think they are playing when actually they are learning to read and write. As a result of this technique even our lowest ability children finish Reception two terms ahead of the average child in the UK.
Our school is also fully organic; the food as well as the cleaning products. The children will soon be growing their own dinners (part of their dinners) with the aim of encouraging children that do not like certain vegetables. We teach the children about different types of foods; the nutrients; the minerals and the vitamins that are contained within them. They get to juice fruits and vegetables and design their own juice mixes. When asked their favourite foods, the children mostly chose pumpkin or broccoli rather than chocolate and sweets. We also teach the children where their waste ends up and the benefits of recycling. They learn about renewable energy sources. In fact anything that we believe to be of great importance to the children in terms of ethical and healthy living, we educate them about. And we make it fun. This is the key, if you make learning fun enough then children will learn, but it is the fun that has been withdrawn from the curriculum in the UK. Okay some lessons are fun but when teachers have to stay up to 10pm every night marking, how can they be expected to make every lesson a fun interactive one. The emphasis needs to be taken away from the teaching and put firmly onto the learning.
We have recently set up a blog to try to educate others on our methods. I wouldn’t say that our ideas are “ground breaking” but they are a step away from the norm. I am sure there are many teachers and parents that think in the same way, but the problem is that politicians back home like to jump on the latest buzz word or trend, playing it safe to secure the vote at the next election, rather than actually thinking about how to improve education.
I am so happy being able to teach the way I want to teach, knowing that the only people that I am now TRULY answerable to are the only people I would feel remorse in letting down… The children.
This article was written by guest author and International School Community member David Walters. He works at British Early Years Centre in Bangkok (the school’s website can be found here) and also has a very informative blog for both parents and teachers.
