What I wish I knew in 1952 as an NQT with Jean Crook

Jean Crook is 90 years old. Can you learn much about teaching today from a 90 year old? You sure can! If you were a great teacher in any era you would be great today and Jean was as good as anyone. And don't think that I'm biased because she's my mother, no not at all. When former pupils from 50 years ago are still visiting her and taking her out to lunch you know she was a special teacher and in this podcast she shares some of her great wisdom from the early years of her career.

In this podcast we talk about ...

• How Jean loved the relationships she formed with pupils and staff, and still meets them decades later.
• The challenge of teaching practice with ferocious lecturers looking for faults and every mistake she made and then being super critical of what she had done.
• Taking white rabbits and frogs on the London underground when teaching science lessons and how entranced the children were to see these living things, even though they were jumping all over the classroom!
• The difficulty of teaching PE when the children throw all the balls over the playground railings into the road.
• Working with vulnerable children, including those who sit under the table and won't come out.
• How you get yourself out of a tricky situation when you have forgotten that you have to teach a music lesson so you have to make it up on the spot and to your surprise the children love it!
• When a lecturer criticised a lesson and said she would show Jean how to do it. Unfortunately, when the lecturer taught the lesson the children went wild and locked themselves in the toilets and the Headmistress had to save the day!
• The importance of pacing yourself as not every lesson every day can be high energy. As long as the children are learning, good enough is definitely good enough, so don't be concerned when lessons don't always go as planned.
• How creative teaching can provide excellent opportunities for developing children's English skills and can even lead to a whole school musical, as it did with 'The Poisoned Apple'.
• Having a final Ofsted observation at age 78 and enthralling the inspector so much with the song 'Great Balls of Fire' that she demanded an encore so she could join in.
• The importance of taking your time to learn your job. Be enthusiastic, work hard and keep trying and you will become a very effective teacher.

You can connect with Jean on Facebook - Jean Crook | Facebook