Posted by: Lois Lindemann on: May 9th, 2010 
Posted in: 
Tags for this post: 
We were sitting in a very quiet pub early yesterday evening, waiting for some friends to meet us for a pre-curry drink, when a guy who was sitting at the other side of the room finally stopped having a loud, booming conversation into his mobile phone and started having a loud, booming conversation with his previously neglected drinking buddy.
We soon learned that Loud Booming Phone Man plans to train as teacher, a maths teacher no less. I was momentarily tempted to jump up and say something wise or encouraging, but I am not given to jumping up and joining in other people’s conversations, besides which I was sadly lacking in wise or encouraging words, so I kept quiet and continued to listen in. How rude. But anyway…
‘Why do you want to be a teacher?’ asked Previously Neglected Drinking Buddy.
‘Because it’s a good job,’ said Loud Booming Phone Man [aw – bless him], ‘And if you teach A Level Maths you get paid more, so I’d be on top whack.’ [Hmm, that’s news to me. I was rapidly revising my opinion of this guy.] ‘Plus, they can’t ever change the syllabus [yes, he really said that – I’m not making this up!] so after a year I’ll have planned all my lessons and then it’ll be easy.’ Wow, evidently I’m doing this teaching thing all wrong…
Other benefits of belonging to my profession allegedly include regular hours and a really big pension. (Now don’t get me wrong, I think the teacher’s pension scheme is excellent, but I’m not sure I’d describe it as really big.)
Oh my. I wonder if Loud Booming Phone Man has got a place on a teacher training course yet.
Mind you, he did get one thing right: teaching maths is a great job. I can’t fault him on that.
Photo: Black Sheep Beermat by russelljsmith. Used under Creative Commons Licence.
Send him my way! Please can I interview him for a PGCE, please please please!
You are both right, best job in the world! On the other hand why aren’t i being paid more than the rest of the school? Still with 4 spec changes in 4 years, they may leave it a lone for a few years (wishful thinking?!).
We were chatting about spec changes at school the other day and remembering those years of ‘no change’ we were promised by Mr Dearing. Surely they must be due to start sometime soon? 😉
I know that you have been a creative and hard-working Maths/ICT teacher – always looking for new ways in. However, in my secondary svchool teaching experience I came across a number of Maths teachers who seemed to have a bloody easy ride. “Lessons” came from the text books in the form of maths exercises and often the children marked their own work. At times I was very envious. Let’s hope the Loudmouth guy turns up at your school for one of his teaching practices!
I’m sure there will always be a few teachers (regardless of subject) who are looking for an easy ride – in fact that group will probably include me in the last couple of weeks of term!