Fraser McKay is a computing teacher and also runs Computing Science Scotland (CSS) Meets, a grassroots group that organises classroom-based CPD.

He tells us about the importance of calmness in a teacher, why the best CPD consists of tried and tested tips from fellow teachers, and the time his classroom was unexpectedly turned into a parkour course.

1. What I wish I’d known when I started teaching is…

It’s a lot more fun than I expected. I’d been a PhD computing student and then dropped out of that and was looking at industry and, basically, I needed a job. I thought I might do teaching for nine months and that it would be interesting - but I didn’t expect it to be fun.

I’d say 99 per cent of the time, teenagers are great. You have this image going in as a student of people throwing chairs around the room and stuff, but that doesn’t happen - at least it’s not typical. Most kids want to learn on some level and will ask you questions and interact with you, and you build relationships with them.

Originally I wanted to be a primary teacher - I thought being a secondary teacher would be awful - but when I got my first placement as a secondary teacher, at Mearns Castle High [in East Renfrewshire]. I was really lucky, I was in a really fantastic school. After being in the classroom for a few days, just observing, I thought, “I really like this - it feels like it clicks.” I think I would need a lot more patience if I was spending all day in a primary school with the same kids.

2. The most important qualities a teacher needs are…

Patience. When you’re explaining something for the fifteenth time and thinking, “How can I reword this again?”, when you maybe deal with the same issues week after week, it can be quite wearing. With behaviour, you need that consistency [of approach] over weeks and weeks and weeks.

Enthusiasm for your subject - and really knowing your subject - is also important. I think that pays off quickly once the kids realise, first of all, that you enjoy what you do, and secondly that you know what you’re talking about. They can sense right away if don’t. 

3. What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in the job?

I’ve developed confidence that I didn’t know I had. Particularly in the last year or so when I’ve had some leadership opportunities, which previously I wouldn’t really have seen myself doing.

4. What is the best change you ever made to your practice?

I’ve become more relaxed. I’m in my fifth year as a teacher. To start with I was probably a bit uptight, particularly with the seniors. You’ve definitely got to be able to adapt. When things go wrong, when there’s something you just can’t control, something crazy - not that that happens a lot - like if the fire alarm goes and you lose 40 minutes, before I would have been really panicky about how to make up that time. Now, I see it’s a marathon, not a sprint - you’re not really planning on a lesson-by-lesson basis, you’ve got these kids for a year.

And with behaviour, there’s no sense in me getting stressed. As a probationer, if something happened behaviour-wise, I’d really have panicked, it was something I found particularly stressful. Now I realise that there’s no point - getting stressed in front of a class is not going to achieve anything.

I’ve also started to incorporate more cognitive science - looking at things like cognitive load, which has made a difference in the classroom, particularly with the seniors. It’s not something that we were taught at university but I’ve seen things about cognitive science on Twitter that, eventually, I’ve incorporated at school.

5. If I could change something about Scottish education it would be…

I would like to see a more subject-specific culture - it was almost something that was just tacked on when I was at university. Some of that did happen during lockdown, because people were at home and subject networks seemed to get started or were picked up after being dormant for a while.

Subject-specific pedagogy and discussion would have benefited me when I was a student or a probationer, the chance to talk to other teachers in my subject.

Of course, you can learn from colleagues in other subjects, but there are just lots of little things, almost like little hacks, that are particular to your subject. And if you’re in a school and there are only one or two computing teachers, then it’s really beneficial to have that network of people across the country.

There were a lot of times when we were put in with primary [students] at university and secondary in general felt tacked on, never mind your subject, which I thought was a bit bizarre at times.

I don’t want to seem dismissive, but I’ve been in a lecture about child development all about toddlers, where secondary was very much an add-on at the end.

6. What is your most memorable moment as a teacher?

When I was six weeks into probation, a particular first-year class was challenging. There was a boy who had a lot of issues. I was really fond of him and got on well with him. Randomly, in the middle of one lesson, he jumped up on the desk, totally out of the blue, and started shouting, “Yay, it’s parkour time!” and jumping from desk to desk. 

I was standing in the front of the class, going, “I don’t know what to do here.” Then he got to the front of the class, looked at me and said, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that, should I?”

I phoned my [principal teacher] and said, “I don’t know what to do with this one.” People did reassure me afterwards that it was so bizarre that it wasn’t going to happen again in my career.

It was embarrassing at the time - but then the same boy kept telling me I was his favourite teacher.

7. What is your worst-ever mistake?

I make mistakes all the time, but it’s hard to point to something really bad. When I was a student, I was taking a Higher class and the first couple of times it went OK, although I did still feel quite intimidated by the pupils, that they were all sitting sniggering, thinking, “He doesn’t really know what he’s doing”.

I was explaining something on the board, doing this calculation, and basically made a mistake early on that they probably all knew, but didn’t point out to me. So I’m getting to the end and this thing is unravelling, it’s not adding up and just doesn’t make any sense - I hadn’t worked it out in advance. They were laughing at me as the whole thing was falling apart.

That was a wake-up call for me - I needed to have worked out the answer in advance and scripted things. Knowing the content isn’t the same as knowing how you’re going to explain it. 

8. My top tip for aspiring teachers is…

Observe and watch what teachers are doing. Don’t go in thinking you already know how to do everything. Try and get different perspectives - if you ask something in the staffroom, you might get a dozen different answers. And think about what it is you actually want the pupils to learn. Not everything needs to be all singing, all dancing - a lesson doesn’t have to be a series of performances - but it has to sink in.

Also, after being in a classroom a few times, you should know pretty quickly if this is a career for you or not.

9. What’s your go-to strategy when faced with challenging pupils?

Now, it’s just to stay calm - but it wasn’t always. It’s not going to serve any purpose for the teacher to panic and get worked up. If anything, the kids are just going to be entertained by that.

Be clear in advance about what the boundaries are. If you’re expecting pupils to be a certain way, you need to actually tell them that and be consistent over time, and it should pay off. Eventually, by the end of the year, you’ll have that difficult class quite settled.

10. The best CPD I ever did was…

When I was a probationer, I got to go to this thing called Picademy with the Raspberry Pi Foundation. They put on this fantastic three-day, totally free CPD at the V&A in Dundee.

It was all very much about how you would teach something, not just, “Here’s a toy, here’s a tool”. It was about how you actually use that as a teacher, and the focus was on CPD by teachers.

I find a lot of CPD starts with people saying, “Now, I’m not a teacher…” and you’re thinking, “Well, why are you here?” I’m not saying that you can’t learn anything [from presenters who aren’t teachers] but it was really useful that this [Raspberry Pi] CPD was very, very focused on how you would teach with the technology.

During lockdown, with other computing teachers, we started CPD called CSS Meets. The goal is to have a few of them a year, a sort of Teach Meets format online. Mostly, the talks have been by teachers - 10 minutes on something you’ve actually done in your classroom that was useful.

The ones that have been viewed the most are all about something a teacher has done in their classroom, rather than “Here’s something you can try” or “Here’s a new tool” - where the presenters can say, “I’ve tried this, and it works.”

Fraser McKay was speaking to Tes Scotland editor Henry Hepburn