I’d always wanted to be a geologist. Born in South Africa, I grew up in Portugal and took a geology degree at Lisbon University. I spent a year as a geologist in the Portuguese copper mining industry and then moved to the UK where my wife wanted to work as a nurse.
I began consultancy work for the UK oil and gas industry as a structural geologist for the next four years. I’d always wanted to teach post-16 students but realised real life industrial experience (which involved regular travel to oil/gas platforms globally) would equip me best to teach geology. I gained a level 4 CTE (Certificate in Training and Education) sponsored by the college when I started teaching in 2016. I plan to take a level 5 once I have completed a part-time PhD next year on Japan’s subduction zones (where tectonic plates collide), a course I started in 2015. A level 4 and 5 CTE, combined with my PhD, will be the teaching equivalent of a PGCE teacher training certificate.
The pace is different. In industry you are not expected to inspire people but are under pressure to complete the work, produce results and finish for the day. In teaching, when you go home you still have do marking, respond to students’ emails and liaise with parents, although if you are passionate about teaching you will find strategies to reduce outside hours. Generally I found transition quite easy as I aimed to put in 150% effort to become the best teacher I could be. It did, however, take me a year to get used to set college vacation times rather than previously arranging breaks with my industry line manager when I needed them.
I teach three A-level courses in our earth sciences department: environmental science, geography and geology. I’m the sole teacher for environmental science, a job that includes marking, meeting parents, planning the course, career advice, producing annual student reports, giving university application and job references and planning an international student trip each year. I teach geography with another teacher - my curriculum leader - and teach geology whenever we attract 12 or more students to the course (not this year).
Newly qualified teachers (NQTs) are assigned a mentor from experienced staff to support them in teaching and managing workload. The college caters for 16-19s with the main focus on BTecs, A-levels and - next year - the first T-levels (although earth science courses are not scheduled to start for a year or so). I teach both first- and second-year students doing A-levels, most of whom go on to university. Out of 13 environmental science students last year, 12 went on to university or took a gap year to continue in the subject or related fields such as oceanography, marine environment or environmental engineering. The other went to work for their family’s firm.
I start at 8am to print off materials, check my PowerPoint presentations, and catch up with admin and emails. The first lesson is from 8.45 to 10.50am, with a 20-minute break. A second lesson leads through to a 40-minute lunch break at 1.15pm, and then a two-hour session till 4pm with a five-minute break in the middle. I teach three blocks of two hours each day, four days a week, with a five-minute break after an hour’s teaching and then a 15-minute break between blocks. Wednesdays are set aside for admin, marking and lesson preparation, when we work from home.
The last international trip for students I organised was in 2019, when students voted to visit four Italian volcanos in five days, including Etna and Vesuvius. For next year I am working on a trip either to Iceland or the Azores (the final destination to be voted on by the students). I’ve also been planning a new green enrichment project on sustainability for all Henley students; it will start this September and aims to encourage the whole college and its local community to become more environmentally friendly. Activities will include raising public awareness of local sustainability issues and prompting local government to adopt new initiatives around Henley.
Doing practical projects outside in the field, locally and overseas.
Natural hazards like earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions; sustainable management of agriculture and fisheries; and how we can live and work more sustainably.
I change the case studies I use in class every year - I look how at how I taught a specific lesson last year in, say, geography and deliberately change it to make it more dynamic or introduce something new - like a new case study. I change many lessons like this annually and it keeps me interested. Because we don’t run geology courses every year, I always try to get timetabled to teach a related subject that’s out of my immediate comfort zone - it was sociology last year and a BTec course in applied science the year before. I also keep up my contacts in industry in occasional work as a geological consultant for companies during college holidays.
Inspiring students, whose motivation can be massively affected by isolation caused by lockdown. I try to overcome this hurdle by bringing a lot of my personal experience into teaching - my students find seeing photos of me working on oil rigs quite funny but it makes them see me as an individual person and not just another teacher! It’s about being a role model.
Seeing all my geography and most environmental science students perform above the national average for the past three years. It’s also seeing former students succeed in their chosen fields, and sometimes being contacted by students years after they have left college.
An hour-long lesson shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to plan - that’s been a golden rule for me. Trust your students and you’ll find it easier to help and guide them when they return that trust. Stay flexible in your teaching and avoid too much repetition each year, ensuring you tweak your courses annually within the curriculum or you can become stale and out of date. Read up about the latest developments in a fast-moving field - it makes the job much more interesting.
You have to enjoy working outdoors. Be ready to be flexible in how and what you teach, particularly on field trips that don’t always go to plan - we were once studying coastal currents off the south coast and expecting long shore drift to move from west to east but this time it reversed, moving from east to west! I had to adapt resources to explain why things were different to normal. And be transparent - tell your students if you can’t answer a question and that you will find out for them.
A specialist degree in your subject, though not mandatory, gives you a big advantage in teaching. You also need a formal teaching qualification - such as a PGCE - that your college will often sponsor you to study when you start teaching at college; many teachers come from an industrial or research background rather than straight from university and so do not necessarily come qualified when they arrive at college.
Avoid what many NQTs do - overload themselves with marking and assessments. Instead, adopt peer-to-peer marking and flip learning, which help students become more independent learners. Getting students to mark each others’ work, such as multiple-choice tests, helps them think as examiners and work out what is required of students in exams. One example of flip learning is when I assigned each student a renewable energy source and asked them to design a scientific poster that explains it in the first half of the lesson; I got them to pair up in the second half and then, after a few minutes’ discussion and preparation, present each other’s poster to the class.
Why do you want to get into teaching? The answer can reveal a lot about the interviewee.
My students and the excitement of knowing every day is different and that learners can be down one day but up the next!
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