Hi everyone

This week I spent 5 days at the Planungswoche Lehrer organisieren ihren Schulstart (LoS) offered by the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz in Windisch.

The program as a whole was really good and provided a lot of insights that will help a lot when I start teaching my class in just 4 weeks.

In this newsletter I share some of the insights I gained during that week. I’ll cover my top three learnings as a teacher, as well as three potential issues I identified I need to stay aware about.

Let’s get started!

3 Insights

• How teachers educate their students varies widely and is largely up to their own discretion. That’s probably related to the situation that teachers get no reward for great performance and usually also no punishment for bad performance (unless there are issues so big that a teacher has to be fired). This means beyond some basic standards, the most important thing that guides teachers in their actions is their own intuition, and not surprisingly that is different from person to person. The good thing about this is that I also get to have a lot of freedom to design my own teaching without much pressure, which is something I’m looking forward to.
• As a class teacher I will deal with many different stakeholders. These are not just students, parents and other teachers of my class, but also other teachers that teach the same subjects as I do, other teachers that teach parallel classes, special pedagogues, the principal, the school administration, tech support, the school caretaker, and more. I think this will make the job both more interesting and more challenging.
• New teaching materials may make it easier to let students work independently. Until this week I used to think that letting students work on their own would be an organizational headache, so I thought I’d only introduce it cautiously. Now I learned that some teachers do this because it creates less work for them than teaching the students themselves. That’s because new teaching material is made so that students get challenged at the right level and won’t run out of exercises without the teacher having to do much.

3 Issues

• Students spend less than 10% of their time in regular classes. In Solothurn it’s less than 800 out of 8800 hours every year (in my last newsletter I mentioned 11%, but it turns out I didn’t consider all the occasions when students don’t receive classes). Even so, some teachers think that this is so much time that they shouldn’t give homework on top of that. I’m not sure yet how to deal with that situation, but I think my students would do better in the future if they could spend a bit more time acquiring skills that will be important for them in the future. Even if they’d spend 20% of their time focused on having a better future, there would still be plenty of time left for fun activities. (Perhaps I’m just idealistic though. Let’s make the reality check when I get to start working)
• Progressive educational theories dominate in Switzerland. During the whole prep week all the material I saw and all the guest lecturers that came, taught a child-centered approach. According to them, what makes the students feel good is great, what might make students feel bad has to be avoided. During the whole week, I don’t think I have heard even once any reference to studies that would show a certain way of doing things actually improves student results. Luckily there are many great books out there that make important studies and insights easily accessible. But I also already know many teachers that don’t educate themselves outside of the progressive bubble. I’ll need to make sure I properly know the scientific evidence, otherwise I won’t be able to stand my ground against the majority when I have to argue why I do things a bit differently.
• I have to deal with shortages of teaching material. I couldn’t even believe it at first. Is it really possible that in a rich country like Switzerland we can’t afford to get the students the books they should have? But it’s actually true. Due to the way budgeting works I am stuck in a situation where my school can’t afford to buy some of the books my students should have. When I asked how to deal with that, the suggestion was that I should just scan or copy all the pages that I need, so that the school can avoid paying for the books. I’m really not yet sure how to deal with this, but I just might buy the needed books with my own money and give them to the students. I feel responsible to offer my students a good learning environment and I do kind of consider books as part of the fundamental requirements of that.

Conclusion

Beyond those 3 insights and 3 issues I also learned many other practical things this week. For example how other teachers deal with common class issues, what software is used these days, how best to interact with parents, and much more. It’s great that I was able to attend this week and I’m now even more looking forward to start teaching already in just 4 weeks.

Have a great week everyone!

Gregor