Classroom Teacher Manual

This book is dedicated to the West Sussex Teachers' Association @WSTANUT who support teachers throughout West Sussex. They are now part of the National Education Union. Introduction If you were trying to find out how to clean a teapot, the chances are that you would go to someone who had cleaned a lot of teapots successfully. If you want to know how to dance, wouldn't you go to a dancer? Yet when you want to learn about teaching you often find yourself in the rarefied realms of some ivory-towered academic. So this is not a book of educational theory, or pedagogy to give it its Sunday name. My only qualifications are: 1) 32 years of successful teaching. 2) Running a helpline for stressed teachers on behalf of the West Sussex Teachers' Association for 16 years. And of course the one thing anybody can tell you is that teachers are idiosyncratic. In the end you have to teach your way not mine. But listen to an old master - learn from my mistakes then you can make your own! "Taking ownership of your pedagogy" is what they call it. I would caution you to avoid the word "pedagogy" around Sun readers. They will have burnt your house down before they have looked in the dictionary and found out it is not the same as "pedo". Former NUT President, John Illingworth wrote: "Derek's book provides well-rooted advice on some serious matters but, through appropriate use of humour, he has managed to make it both easy and interesting reading. His long experience in teaching shines through."