The longer I am in teaching, the more time I spend thinking about Andrew. 

Andrew was my A-level history teacher, and he was old school in every sense of the phrase. He would never have met you at the door with a personalised handshake or a hug, and I can almost see the disgusted face he would pull at the idea of having a working wall or praise stickers. 

His room was plain, his dry-wipe pens were always ready, and his marking feedback was so clear and specific it could cause physical winces. 

Andrew was one of the greatest teachers I have ever had, yet I am sure that had Andrew attempted to pass his initial teacher training in the 2010s, he would have failed. 

When I was training, I would have been Andrew’s nightmare colleague. I used to pride myself on beautiful and bright displays, constantly changing working walls, stunning visual resources, group activities, differentiated learning objectives, interactive lessons - the list of what I pushed for to be rated “outstanding” is almost endless. 

Teaching and learning: Stripping everything back to basics

But skip forward a few years, and now my own classroom is remarkably Andrewesque. I live and die by my whiteboard, my most used resources are exhausted - pen-coated copies of novels, plays and anthologies - and I spend hours every week aiming for absolute clarity in everything I do.  

Of course, I know that these strategies are ones that develop over time. As your subject knowledge and understanding of curriculum demand develop, so grows your independence from them. 

However, the reality is that both my space and my teaching have become such a complete antithesis of my ITT year that I can’t help but reflect on the environments I have created in the past - and shudder at how much time I spent creating them. And then I wonder if our stripping everything back would improve the student experience. 

Much of my reflection has been prompted by working with significantly more students who have, for whatever reason, found mainstream education inaccessible. To do my role well, I’ve had to learn to cut the fat to ensure that students don’t become overwhelmed.

This has meant trading out just about everything I held dear in the first few years of my career, and bringing in clean, neutral spaces, where there is always equipment to hand, all paired with clear instructions and very little digital input or overcrammed worksheets.

Working closely with these students and their teachers has also left me thinking that there’s an awful lot that mainstream settings can learn from the alternative provision sector. I am constantly reminded that there is no one way with these students. But what does need to stay steadfast is a powerful combination of flexibility, predictability and routines. 

Having to be prepared to scrap your grand plans and dedicate as many hours as you need to one topic reminds me, too, of Andrew (and the long few weeks he spent teaching us about Italian unification, because we couldn’t quite get our heads around the fact that Italy hadn’t always been, well, Italy).

In mainstream teaching, I would fly through content in 45 minutes, and measure the curriculum in tiny, enforced six-week chunks. But a slower, more thorough pace not only decreases stress in the room but also improves engagement, motivation and recall. 

The things that matter most in the room

Clearing up the use of resources matters more, too. When I think of my early teaching resources, I wonder now if they were more for me - or whoever I was trying to impress - than they were for the students. 

My pretty slides and worksheets have all but gone. In their place, I now narrate, discuss and model my every thought and decision. This is a slow process, and one that means I pour through dry-wipe ink. But seeing and hearing the warts-and-all process makes so much difference to students that I can’t believe I didn’t make the switch sooner. 

I’ve traded out just about everything I valued in the first few years of my career, and now value clear, neutral spaces, where there is equipment to hand, all paired with clear instructions and very little digital input. 

Now, I’m not decrying the use of technology or any particular style of resource, because I believe they all have their place and can be wonderful.

But the deep love that teachers have of outwardly simple-looking “whiteboard lessons” (the best of which are often underpinned by high expectations combined with metacognition and self-regulation strategies), and the engagement it brings from students seems to be a sure sign to me that maybe it’s time to let a lot of our training go. 

When I think of how a lesson observation would go for me now, I’d almost definitely fail: there are no pastel-hued student posters pinned up; there are no coloured differentiation expectation cards on the tables; there are no overwhelming word walls; and there are no lovely, sequenced PowerPoints that I can print out for my observer. 

But do you know what? Every year I become more convinced that Andrew had it right. The things that matter most in the room are you and your students. And as for all the other stuff? I’d say it requires improvement. 

Lauran Hampshire-Dell is a teacher and tutor