TM4T Lifestyle 2.1 - TM4T Improvement

There are many good books on reflective practice, and I will not try to repeat their wisdom or summarise it here. Luckily, if you are teaching in the UK, your holidays are long and you have access to excellent libraries.

It is important that you think carefully about how important this aspect of your job actually is – this will vary from school to school. My experience was that my job as a new head of department required skills in the following proportions:

a) up to date subject knowledge: 30%

b) excellent pedagogy: 40%

c) excellent personal organisation and bureaucratic skills: 30%

It is therefore logical that when I was – as a reflective practitioner - looking at personal development, I gave around about one third of my time to aspects like time management, personal organisation and PC skills. I would encourage you to do likewise. Treat this website as an introductory text and develop your skills over the years to come. You will become an excellent teacher in all respects. You will doubtless have noticed that there are some things teachers do a lot of - apart from teaching that is. These include: reading, typing and looking at computer screens.

It is remarkable, therefore, how little focus teachers give to developing skills in these areas. In order to be reasonably efficient, you should ensure that you develop the following skills

a) Skim-reading

b) Touch-typing

c) Web research

You should also routinely update your IT skills and seek to make yourself a paperless teacher. To understand more, click here.