4.+Teaching+in+London

Teaching in London has been one of the most rewarding and challenging aspects of my short teaching career so far. In a city full of possibilities, when I first arrived I obtained a few jobs just to survive and finance my travel ambitions. It was these day to day jobs that showed me the difficulties faced by teachers in the United Kingdom. At the beginning it was hard. My teaching experiences were completely different from anything I had experienced back in Australia. I was teaching in schools where pupils came from a variety of backgrounds, and where English at home was their second language. The children were coming from a lower socio-economic background, and a majority of the children were on the Governments free school dinner register. As most schools I had worked in back at home focused on assertiveness, discipline and challenging behaviour, these were words from Mars over here, London was a baptism of fire. What at the beginning I thought was rudeness in my pupils was, in most cases, a different way of understanding life and learning. There were sometimes difficulties in my students’ lives that I couldn’t see as they didn’t reveal what went on at home (if there was a home). There are more than seven million stories in London and I am lucky to have heard some of them as I worked in a school with 1000 students. They taught me their values, points of view and expectations. I used my own life experiences to put myself in their shoes and try to understand their difficulties, needs and frustrations. They were very, very demanding and did not hesitate to tell me what they thought, but this was all part of the experience and has definitely had a positive effect on how I look at children and teach them today. The schools and children of London have taught me to really value each day I have in the classroom. It has shown me that no matter where I am teaching that all children come in to a class with different experiences, different backgrounds and different expectations. It is this knowledge that I will use in my own classroom at home to make sure that I have a positive effect on every child that passes through my door. I will make sure that I provide them with the important tools to become valued members of their communities through life long learning.