Teach Secondary Issue 13.6

When it comes to teaching those bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Y7s their first lesson at their new school, initial impressions count for a lot, counsels John Lawson ... Sir Winston Churchill once advised that an important speech should take an hour to write for every minute it takes to deliver, while at the same time leaving your audience convinced it’s being delivered entirely off the cuff. The best op-eds, speeches, sermons and lessons all possess this quality – the careful concealment of toil. Great expectations I’ve never forgotten the thrill of giving my first A Level class, which happily elicited applause and a standing ovation frommy audience of 12 convent schoolgirls. 30 years on, I don’t think I ever bettered it. Every line, joke, quip and poignant point fell perfectly into place. I remember floating home that Friday afternoon, feeling like God’s own gift to the teaching profession – but it was a lesson that had taken many hours to prepare. I had been determined to show how an NQT could teach at the very highest level – but now, having done so, what on earth was I going to do for the next 39 weeks of teaching, with expectations pitched so impossibly high? As it turned out, that class would eventually be taken on by a more experienced teacher for the summer term. With 23 other lessons to prep each week, numerous books to mark and reports to write, I’d started flagging – badly. My students had exams to pass and simply needed someone smarter than me. I missed the last two weeks of term after my candle finally burned out. I could no longer survive on just four hours sleep a night with no days off. Seizing the day My first year thus ended badly, but I was determined to carry on – and what kept me going was the vivid memory of the adrenaline rush during that first A Level lesson. One thing I never backtracked on in my career was making my first classes first-class . Initial impressions are hugely important, which is why my first lessons with a new class will always be geared towards sharing precisely why my subject is so important and fascinating. ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Lawson is a former secondary teacher, now serving as a foundation governor while running a tutoring service, and author of the book The Successful (Less Stressful) Student (Outskirts Press, £11.95); find out more at prep4successnow.wordpress.com or follow @johninpompano A first-class first class THE LAST WORD After a long summer holiday, the last thing students want is to be addressed by five or six teachers droning on about the boring rules. Engaging teachers will generate respect, and hence tend to find themselves rarely having to enforce and re-enforce their classroom rules. This is captured well by the film Dead Poets Society , in how it shows the all-male students of the prestigious Welton Academy enduring their first few lessons. After all, why would Shakespeare and poetry ever interest teenagers preparing to be captains of industry? The sole master to capture the boys’ imaginations is English teacher John Keating, played by Robin Williams. We’re shown how, in just a few weeks, Keating’s Romantic convictions have captivated most of his students – particularly the idea that ‘ nobody is liked by everyone ’. Keating’s overall message is that by seizing the day, these boys can make their lives extraordinary, well before becoming little more than nourishment for the worms and daisies. Crafting the ‘biggies’ That first lesson of mine initially took about 10 hours to compose, and included a 20-minute monologue on the importance of thinking for ourselves and living authentic lives – what Keating might call the ‘biggies’. I taught theology, in which there are few questions as foundational as that of whether God exists. It’s the biggest ‘biggie’ of them all: ‘ If we’re not created, then what makes us more significant than the common beetle? Is faith merely a mask for irrationalism, or do we have reason to believe that we matter? ’ Weather permitting, my first lesson of the year would thereafter commence with taking the students on a walk around the sports field, before returning to class and watching the best motivational video I’ve ever seen – a clip from the 2006 sports film Facing the Giants , which you can view for yourself via bit.ly/ts136-JL1. Nearly 30 years after teaching that first lesson, the structure of that Y7 introductory class had become as near perfect as I could make it – and the feedback I received would assure me that my teenage students were excited to learn more. 90 teachwire.net/secondary