How to become a primary school teacher: Toby's story

Toby:

I'm Toby. I'm 24 years old and I'm a primary school teacher.

I chose to be a primary school teacher because I think that the Early Years education is possibly the most important years of a child's life. I felt that for me, it was where I could make the biggest difference. My day-to-day involves coming in and setting up for the class, so I try and get everything as ready as possible. I sort out tables, sort out their books, make sure that everything's ready. In primary school, we break down every aspect of reading, every aspect of working in Maths, working in English, so that they can take those onto their next area of education. At this young age, we find it really important to make things as visual and as concrete as possible for the children so, in phonics for example, we might be using sound cards to help the children break down words into different sounds, so they're then able to read those words in a text. However education isn't just about the academics. We try to build our children to be fully formed human beings and make them emotionally smart, socially smart, to be able to interact with the rest of society in a positive way.

I went to Edinburgh in Scotland to study Psychology and Philosophy, but it wasn't until my second year of university that I actually considered teaching as a profession. I'd gone and worked with kids in San Francisco out in America and I realised that, not only did I love working with children, but it was also something that suited me. When I came back from my second summer in California, someone talked to me about a programme called Teach First, which was essentially a programme where you taught for two years while earning your Postgraduate Diploma in Education. Even though I knew I loved working with children, I wasn't sure that teaching was necessarily the profession I wanted to do for the rest of my life and Teach First was the best way of giving me an impression of what it would be like to be a teacher and I think actually within my first year now I've realised that it's what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I don't know if I would have been able to make that commitment, originally. It's very well known, that there aren't that many men in primary school teaching. I think it's something like three percent of primary school teachers are male and I think it's something that does need to be changed, because it is so important that these children have male and female role models, growing up through school as teachers. For example, some of my children had never had a male teacher before, so for the first few months of school, they all called me "Miss". So I do really encourage as many men as possible to get involved in primary school teaching. The reality of teaching is that the school day finishes at 3:20 and you might still be here until six o'clock, marking books and planning for the next day. Despite that though, the highlights are really those small interactions with the children and those moments when you are able to see a child take on board and learn something that you've taught them and that for me makes it all worthwhile.