what it’s like to quit your job and start teaching at 58: by lucy kellaway, who swapped her pampered life on the financial times for a tough east london school - best electronic whiteboard

Usually I don't make a new year's decision, but for 2018, I have solemnly decided to change ten things.
Among them: no arbitrary rulers are tolerated.
Detention of anyone who has not completed their homework.
Correct with a green pen.
Stick 18 glue in a clear bag.
I didn't care about the rulers until last September. Nor detentions.
I am a much loved columnist for The Financial Times, and for 32 years I have lived a happy working life and written something I like.
Now 58 years old, I am an internship math teacher at the mosburn Community College, a strict Comprehensive School in Hackney, east London.
I'm also a colleague.
The founder of a charity called Now Teach, aims to encourage other people with successful careers to join the world's most noble profession: teaching.
My life was completely subverted.
People always ask what it feels like.
I hope there is a simpler way to tell them that this is all of this (
Usually at the same time)
: Tired, uplifting, ruthless, stretched, humiliated and deeply satisfied.
At this time two years ago, when I thought that I no longer liked what I was doing, it started.
My column is not getting better, maybe worse;
My youngest child left home for college.
The father I have been taking care of has recently passed away and my mortgage has been paid off.
I am close to the age of the previous generation leaning towards retirement.
But why would I do that?
Dad lived to be 90.
I may live longer.
I hope to work well in my 70 s.
In my final career, I wanted two things: excitement and fear to start over, and the feeling of being useful.
Because my mother is
The English teacher I love and my daughter are an inspiring history teacher, and being useful to me only means one thing: follow them.
So now, when I start a new semester, my first semester
Probably the most difficult)
The term behind me, how is it going?
The sobering fact is that if what I want is fear and excitement, I can barely control the amount.
So much so that most mornings I was awake at five o'clock A. M. and my mind was filled with lesson plans and children's faces that I couldn't sleep.
Does it feel useful? Not yet.
Although at the end of last semester, a child who steadfastly refuses to see minus negative numbers and increasing positive numbers suddenly gets it.
For 35 years in the workplace, I don't think I have experienced the level of expertise that is as high as when I saw the student's correct amount page.
Back in the spring of 2016, when I was planning to escape journalism, I thought that I was not unusual, but a typical 50-year-old professional.
It is normal to feel uneasy after doing the same thing for decades.
It is normal to want to do a meaningful job.
Every time I open a paper, I read that there are fewer and fewer teachers, especially in science. although there is nothing to prevent people of my age from becoming teachers, all recruitment materials show 22-year-olds.
If there is an organization that teaches first, recruits fresh graduates to work in school, and where is the final teaching?
So, by intuition, I
Created Now Teach, did a bit of publicity and sat down to see what was going on.
I am not prepared for a large number of applications.
Within 24 hours of writing my plan, 20,000 people visited the Now Teach website and more than 100 applications arrived.
A total of 1,000 age-specific people expressed interest and in September 47 of us gave up our old life and started again. Study in the classroom of London's challenging middle school.
At our Evaluation Center, qualified trainers tested our subject knowledge.
Before being interviewed by the school we matched, we gave us the classes we prepared.
Now we work four days a week, three days a week. and-a-
Half a day at school
Training days provided by various teacher training institutions including education charity Ark.
Inspired by success, we have recruited twice as many adults at schools in London and Hastings this year.
In the past two weeks, Teach First has revealed that it will focus on older students and encourage more middle-level employees.
Older professionals change careers to improve their schools.
When we started, many people accused me of doing something immoral.
I don't know what it's like to be a teacher, but I'm there, without my knowledge, to convince others to join one of the hardest professions in the world without knowing anything about it.
Now, I admit it's my arrogance, but I don't regret it at all.
Just before Christmas, the first current teaching team gathered for a drink to celebrate the survival of our first semester.
Everyone looks thinner, a little tough, but alsooddly —younger.
Maybe surrounded by young people.
Or, this can happen to you when you start learning again.
We use tepid proseck and a slice of pizza and continue drinking during the first semester until the end of the term, and we are all talking about kids, behaviors, plans at school.
So far, only 3 of the 47 people have not succeeded, and even if more people give up halfway, others are bringing the world experience and real dedication to the school.
When we share stories of humiliation and victory, we agree on one thing: teaching is cruel.
Even if you are in a school with excellent behavior, there is no chance for children to throw paper planes, not to mention throwing chairs at you, which is still difficult.
Probably the hardest thing we 've ever done.
It's not a long time-
They are no longer many other professional jobs.
As a teacher, you don't even lose all your autonomy in your past life.
Former colleagues and contacts often said to me, 'Let's have lunch together.
Which day are you best?
It is difficult for them to understand my answer: "The teacher does not have lunch . "
"When you finish marking, you 'd better put a box of shepherd's pies, cakes and cream frozen on your desk.
I don't mind this structure.
I loved the comforting way my days were ruled by bells like children.
I don't mind being smaller than you either. I relish it.
I once had a respectable title.
But there is an easy way at the bottom of the pile.
I am only responsible for my study.
As an internship teacher, I have about £ 20,000 so I am putting in savings, but not as much as I thought because I have hardly spent any money --
I don't have time to shop.
The problem is not my age.
I didn't feel for a second that I didn't have the energy to get into a new career.
It is tiring for everyone, but the people most affected by it are not in their 50 s, but teachers who have children at home.
If the children think it is unusual to be taught by white-haired people, they will not say so.
It doesn't matter how old my young colleague is.
We worked happily together and joked together so much that I started telling myself that they didn't even notice that I was 30 years older than them.
Until one of them said I reminded her of her grandmother and brought me back to reality.
The hardest and best: the teaching itself.
I used to be pretty good at my job, but now I'm fine at best and frustrated at worst.
It turns out that teaching is a difficult, highly skilled job and I am naturally weak because I am new to it.
If I were an intern cardiac surgeon, I would also be bad after my first semester.
I think that's what I think, because teaching is done in the family, so I'm natural.
I visited too many schools and wanted to experience the real
Equivalent to the life of the death Poets Association
Robin Williams's teaching was very inspiring and the film quickly changed his student life --
But in private, I hope to get better soon.
The truth is I'm not.
In each lesson I make a lot of mistakes and they will not be called mistakes only in teacher training.
They are tactfully called "better if "(EBIs).
My EBIs is a legion.
I need to learn not to speak before I get 100 attention and no one fiddling with rulers.
I need to say a few words less.
I need to do something about the beginning and the end of the course of the mess, where I forgot to hand out the exercise book and didn't bring the glue stick.
I need to reduce the heavy work and let the children do more.
I need to master the whiteboard, which still makes me fail. (
In my first four lessons, I used felt pens instead of electronic pens to write on them to make the children happy. )
More fundamentally, I need to see better what each child is doing, who is listening, who understands, and who doesn't.
The best teachers know when to explain themselves and when to get the kids to work.
My tutor, Mariam Rizvi, is a strong math teacher, 25 years younger than me, and her requirements for me are as high as her requirements for students.
Would I mind being told by someone a little older than my child what to do? Not at all.
Age is irrelevant.
I respect her experience, so do what she says.
She sat in my class and would email me how many things I did wrong.
I don't think they have a problem.
I find it easier to be a newbie now than I was a newbie The last time 35 years ago.
When I received a list at the end of a class setting out all the things I did wrong, I sighed inside, but then started working to correct them.
I don't know where this new thick skin came from.
As a columnist, I would be a lot smarter if someone suggested in any way that my work was lacking.
I may have grown up.
But I doubt that.
I think it's something more basic.
I'm a columnist.
Being a teacher has nothing to do with me.
It's about the children.
This was what saved me in the darkest days at the end of last semester, when I forgot to detain myself, I don't understand that my explanation of the substitution in algebra is more than half the head of the student.
In those days, I thought of the children.
On the mantel at home, I have a student's card that says, "You are the best math teacher I have ever seen.
I am sure that some students will please all their teachers in this way, but I still cherish it.
I know I have a long way to go.
But even now, after a day of teaching, most of the kids know something they don't know from the beginning.
It feels great.
I am writing this on the last day of the holiday, and the prospect of tomorrow makes me more excited and fearful than the first day of September.
This time, unlike the last time, I knew exactly what I was doing.
I don't know what will happen on 2018.
But I know two things.
First of all, I will not be bored for a moment.
Second, I know that no matter how hard I try, I will be on a useful way.
Because of this, in my life, I will keep my New Year's resolution for the first time. nowteach. org.