Teach Primary Issue 19.5

morning support. The Year 4s decide to drop me as soon as they can, while the Year 6 staff just can’t think what to do with me. In their experience, I’m told, when children are taken out of the classroom for small-group work, they just sit there and do nothing! Nobody asks me what I have done, what I think, or what I am able to offer. Just a few weeks into my eagerly anticipated new job, then, I find myself floating round the Year 6 classroom, helping children edit their heavily highlighted writing. They certainly don’t want to be taken out of the classroom to correct a minefield of punctuation and spelling errors, in that all-important chase for the coveted ‘working at’ evidence. By now, my self-esteem is starting to plummet and I am left wondering if the school rule of treating everyone the way we want to be treated applies to teaching assistants as well as to pupils. The afternoons seem to be heading in a better direction; children really do appear happy (in the main) to exit classrooms and be taught in a small, focused and interactive environment. It’s personal to them and S o, here I am, about to start my new part-time teaching assistant role. I am one of those over 60s (in my case well over 60) that the government is so keen to have return to the workplace – or with me, keep going after 35 years of teaching – and I’m sitting in the school hall on the first inset day of September. It’s a larger school than I am used to (two form entry) but the thought of providing English support in the mornings, maths and English tutoring in the afternoon, and lunchtime supervision is one to which I’m really looking forward. Hello? At the end of the first session, I decide to set off and locate the Year 4 and Year 6 members of staff who I have been told I will be working alongside in the mornings. Imagine my surprise when neither the Year 4 teachers nor the Year 6 teachers have any idea who I am, nor what my role in the school is meant to be. Several weeks later, although my afternoon tutoring sessions are confirmed and seem to be going well, nobody appears any wiser in relation to my they get to have a learning voice, not one that is carefully constructed by the school for Ofsted. All good things must have their inevitable downside, however. My tutor groups are data-driven, so new data means new pupils – which might not be so bad if teachers or the senior management team attempted any sort of conversation with me regarding pupil progress. In reality, children move in and out of my groups without consultation. Lacking personality ‘Pink for think’, ‘green for growth’, underline, miss a line are the marking What happened to the GOLDEN RULE? To address the recruitment and retention crisis, we need to treat our TAs as we’d wish to be treated ourselves, says Melanie Moynihan ... “There have been teachers who barely acknowledged my existence as a TA” 32 | www.teachwire.net