By now, the trainee teachers in placement on our teacher education programme start to increase the number of hours they are teaching. It can be a challenging time as that teacher begins to face the demands and complexity of teaching. 

So here are two areas of advice from a teacher educator that I hope will help you through these potentially taxing times.

You may be feeling “out of control” as you face the challenges of ordering your thoughts, communicating ideas and concepts with clarity and precision, following your lesson plan, behaviour-managing your group, remembering to question or stretch students and assess how much they are learning. Cognitively, there is a lot going on, so be kind to yourself, acknowledge this and look for strategies to help you face the challenge.

Tips for trainee teachers

Classroom routines

One of the things I did as a new teacher was to develop a “routine” of things I did in my classroom that set both the learning environment and myself up ready for the session. I still follow a version of it today - if for no other reason than it is familiar and gets my head in the right space. More recently, I have watched a Chartered College of Teachers newly qualified teacher webinar by Doug Lemov taking the audience through his classroom strategies. 

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Background: Why we need to recognise teacher expertise in colleges

The NQTs were really enthused about what were essentially routines developed to help teachers deal with the myriad of concerns you may have in a classroom, such as communicating the content, expectations and methods of feedback for a task. I think these are very much the kind of routines that can help a training teacher deal with some of the complexities they face and you don’t need to watch huge numbers of other teachers like Doug Lemov did in order to develop a few of your own.

Be kind, but honest

You may be facing what I find the worst of all experiences for the teacher:  that class that is just going “wrong”. You may be trying your darndest, but the learning experience is just not what you had planned and you are losing the learners. This is an awful experience and, believe me, it is one that will persist throughout your career from time to time. It never feels nice and, and as long as you are constantly working to put it right, one that can never be your “fault”. If this is where you are, or when you get there, my best piece of advice is to be kind to yourself, while also being honest.

By being kind to yourself I mean don’t wear a hair shirt or beat yourself up. This won’t improve things for you or your students. Do take a bit of time for head space, talk to a mentor or to someone from teacher education - they may be able to offer help or may even have seen or experienced the problem themselves. After that, you need to be honest with yourself about where things are going wrong. Again, this may involve talking to your mentor and it probably should involve asking your students. It could also be looking back over your lesson plan to analyse what has gone wrong and putting in place something to try to address the problem.

When you ask your students for feedback, be ready and try to see comments as not personal to yourself. Learners can be blunt and often only see things from their own perspective. This is one of the most difficult challenges of teaching - because criticism can sting. 

I haven’t worked out how to take that sting away, it still stings me every time. The only thing that works for me is just to take some time and return to the feedback once those feelings have subsided. I always go back to the central idea that, as the teacher, it is part of my professionalism to develop my practice. I just try to accept that sometimes people don’t consider how it feels to receive feedback, and that’s OK. If I get it right next time, I can ensure that I avoid these issues in future and I remember that no one is perfect.

So hang on in there, new teachers. We’ve all been there, and most of us have the scars and stories to prove it. Deliberate analysis and development of practice is my best advice. As the year develops, so will you.

Sam Jones is the chair of the steering committee at the Research College Group and founder of FEResearchmeet