Because we really all want to be doing it ourselves...

When I first went into have some pre-PGCE school experience, to see if I really wanted to be a teacher, I actually went to my school to do this.  I really enjoyed my time in the school and I always remember one incident when I was there that first time.
 When I was observing in a year 6 class, the teacher (who is still there) was asking them to create these monograms for something. As I sat there making notes, I remembered thinking, "I wish I could do one.  I'd do this...".  It was as if the teacher read my mind because 2 minutes later, she came over to be and dropped one of the pieces of paper and a pencil in front of me and muttered, "Because we all secretly want to be doing the work ourselves."  I duly and merrily joined in and drew my own monogram.

This has often remained in my head and I have often wondered if one of the subconscious facets of being a teacher, perhaps even being a good teacher, is that we like doing school work ourselves and would like to do it.  Is that just true for art or music work? When I did my LSO on track music training scheme, all of us teachers absolutely adored the creative days where we got to make compositions and try out the tasks we would be asking the children to do.   Whenever I taught art, I always modelled and took great joy in it.

But my ultimate favourite was writing. When I taught literacy, I always took great delight in writing modelled texts for my class and when observed or accompanied by teaching assistants, often the thing people would say is that they loved it when I did Shared writing with a class. Somehow that passion would come across and the whole class would be itching to join in with the writing, contributing adjectives, conjunctions, punctuation etc. I've not had to do so much of that since being a music teacher and it just happens that for half a year, I've taught a Literacy lesson on a Friday morning and thoroughly enjoyed it.  It was the last one this Friday just gone as we will be doing Cornet lessons with the music service from next week.  The children were watching this film called 'Varmints' based on a book they are studying.  It is really beautiful and very mysterious too, I recommend watching it.  As I was marking their preparatory work for writing a diary based on the final day (from around 17:45 in the film), I commented to J, their class teacher, that I wished I could be the one writing the text and I said I might go home and write on the train, just for the fun of it. J laughed and said if I really wanted to, then she would use it as a model text with the children on Monday, she was half incredulous I was willing to do that.

But do it, I did and had a great time doing it. It's a bit waffly.  Of course, as  teacher, I wanted to ensure that all the things we wish children would do in their writing.  CBC read it and said, "You've got quite a lot of description there and indeed, when I first read it back, I got a bit bored of the complex sentences and starting with an adverbial each time.I decided to cut a bit but still, it is a page and a half.  Why not do the task we are asking the children to do. It is all good practice and, I think, helps you to advise the children better if you have done the same.

What do you think? Do you think you'd like to do the tasks a teacher asks a pupil to do or am I alone in that?

xx