Christian Clarke
1. Tell us a little about your current job. What do you enjoy most?
I am currently a School Business Manager at a Primary School. I enjoy being involved in making whole school decisions relating to the school budgets and marketing strategy. It is also good to learn and apply Health and Safety and Employment Laws after 14 years of Business Studies classroom teaching.
2. I see you have come some way from doing the MTeach. What would you say are the key things about the MTeach that have stayed with you?
The biggest impact the MTeach qualification had on me was to view teaching as a learning experience rather than focussing too heavily on curriculum content. This enabled me to see similarities across the different education sectors, (Primary, Secondary and FE) and be able to share good practice from a wider pool of resources. Whilst working in the FE Sector I was the college lead for Teaching Learning and Assessment and the strategies of assessment for learning and open mind set had strong links to the approaches being delivered within both the primary and secondary sector. The biggest challenge was to open colleagues mind sets to experimenting with approaches being used in earlier phases of education.
3. What did your dissertation/ practice based enquiry (RPBE or PBE) explore? What did you find out and how did it influence you?
I investigated Assessment for Learning. The main influence of the PBE was to change my approach to teaching. Rather than focussing on curriculum when planning lessons I would consider the skills the learners needed to have to successfully achieve the final assessment. I then spent more class time developing learners research, literacy or numeracy skills to help them become independent learners. The biggest thrill I experienced from teaching was being able to support learners on their journey towards becoming independent learners. This created an exciting possibility of them entering a world of lifelong learning where they would have the ‘tool-set’ to follow their passions and learn new skills for the rest of their life.
4. How was the MTeach work different from School or other professional development courses (e.g. INSET)?
The MTeach allowed me to follow an area of interest rather than being constrained by the latest fad or response to change in Ofsted inspection frameworks. It allowed me to explore an area of education in detail over two years and reflect on the impact my teaching approaches were having on learners. The structure of the MTeach also allowed me to gain an understanding of different education environments as I was able to discuss education theory with practitioners from both primary and secondary sectors whilst my Inset days were always limited to post 16 educators.
5. The MTeach is for teachers only, it often uses the sharing of participants classroom experiences/practice as a starting point, how did this work for you?
The group of Teachers in my MTeach cohort were a mixture of Primary, Secondary and FE teachers. This provided a wealth of experiences across the whole education range. This helped to reduce some barriers that inadvertently develop during your PGCE where you are allocated into Primary, Secondary or FE PGCE cohorts. It is probably a generalisation but sometimes it seems there is more focus on learning in primary schools and as students move through secondary to Post compulsory environments this focus on learning becomes less and less and curriculum dominates more and more. This can sometimes lead to losing the magic and enthusiasm we experience when we learn something new for the first time.
6. What is your next career move?
I have worked in Secondary Schools and in the FE Sector and have been a Deputy Head of School. I am enjoying the break from marking that my current role of School Business Manager provides me and I am enjoying learning about how primary schools work. In the next couple of years I will probably undertake another qualification. That may be a qualification linked to Headship or to develop my subject knowledge in a new area such as computer game design or Art.