…and I said “No thanks.”
There’s something addictive about writing your truth, especially when you know you’re cutting through façades people like to hold onto. My article was titled:
Warning - Exam Season Turns Good Teachers into Bullies
It was published with Schools Improvement Net in the run up to GCSEs, A Levels or whatever exams schools make students do this time of year. It was written to ask this question:
You know what? The responses were overwhelmingly positive! Like this from Jill Berry who’s really well known and respected in the UK Teacher community…
Here’s another raw response from a teacher…
It turned out to actually NOT be controversial at all! Now I really wish I’d known as a student how up for question our current schooling system is. Why is this such a hushed topic? Why do teachers feel such a need to present us with a unified front?
Was it all positive? ALL!
OK, except this one…
…she’d teach dancing? No one’s gonna stop people teaching. Good teachers have students who go out into the world and say to other people; “Go and learn with this teacher!”
What if we just stop pretending that THIS is reality…
The ‘dancer’ my critic talks about is my little cousin. Her experience provides the case study in my article “Exam Season Turns Good Teachers into Bullies” here… Continue reading