Questioning

I’ve loved social media from the start.  I adored MySpace and its weird little rival Bebo, and I got serious FOMO when my friends who were still at university were signed up to TheFacebook and I wasn’t.  In retrospect, even in the nineties when I was running up my parents’ phone bill designing Geocities sites, I was already embracing that need for virtual connections and self-aggrandisement that would later become the norm among young people.  (Sorry, current teenagers.)

Despite this, I never really got into Teacher Twitter.  I did once have a Twitter account which I used for school business, as well as a pseudonymous account where I could swear with impunity without the pupils seeing, but even before I deleted them last year (because Elon, obviously) I never really felt the need to connect with other educators.  I had plenty of teacher friends and CPD opportunities within my own school, and I didn’t really have an urge to seek out any more.

That was before I started this blog, though, and I realised that if I wanted teachers to read it – and remember I’m doing this anonymously, so word-of-mouth hasn’t been an option –  I’ve needed to get myself out there.  I’ve opened up accounts all over the place: I’m on Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Facebook and Instagram, and have followed a lot of teachers in the cynical hope that they might follow me back and read this blog.  In doing so, I’ve found a lot of very lovely and supportive people online who have not only read what I’ve had to say, but engaged in proper conversations with me and offered advice and encouragement which has been genuinely valuable.  Even though I’m not going anywhere near it again (again, Elon), I have started to understand why EduTwitter has been so popular with teachers.

I think the thing about online teaching communities on social media that I’ve struggled with, though, has been the enthusiasm.  It may be the Britishness in me, the part that prefers to hide any genuine passion and joy behind a prickly veneer of cynicism, but seeing people that enthusiastic about their job makes me want to puke ever so slightly.  At the start of term, as I mourned the loss of the summer holidays, my feeds were full of people who were posting photos of their new classrooms with “let’s do this!”-style motivational messages.  It was difficult to refrain from replying in ways that would have got me blocked, banned and/or arrested.

When I did my teacher training, every Monday morning began with a professional development session led by a screeching trouser-suited SLT secondee who started each lecture by asking us all if we’d read anything interesting in the educational news that week.  The idea was that we’d be up to date on the latest developments, I suppose, so that we could show off our knowledge at any job interviews we needed to go to.  (I have literally never needed to do this.)  Lots of the keen beans would put up their hands and share some tedious titbit about something the education secretary had farted out of his mouth that week, and she would praise them and try to make the rest of us feel guilty for not caring.  She was excruciating.

On the other hand, the old retired English teacher who took us for our subject-based lessons ignored all of that nonsense.  He told us stories from his teaching days, got us reading aloud to each other, tested us on our knowledge of grammar and poetry and Shakespeare and gently mocked us for all the things we didn’t know.  We absolutely loved him.  When I got to my placement school, half of the English department there had been trained by him and spoke about him like a much-missed elderly relative they wished they saw more often.

It’s clear why screechy CPD woman was never going to win our hearts in the way that avuncular literary Grandpa was, and it’s for the same sort of reason that I find some sections of education social media hard to swallow.  I’m fully aware that most of them are probably much, much better teachers than I am and are probably full of good advice that it would do me good to listen to; but that’s also true of fitness instructors, dieticians and self-help gurus, and I’ve never been that keen on listening to them either.

The other thing that I think has put me off is that my first exposure to Teacher Twitter was a member of senior leadership at our school who encouraged us all to open teacher accounts and told us how “Twitter was the best form of CPD”.  The same man, one of a long line of assistant and deputy heads who had trained as PE or geography teachers, had us using all sorts of stupid ideas in the classroom that he’d stolen from some online guru which did nothing to improve the literacy or essay-writing skills of our pupils.  We wheeled out the daft ideas for observed lessons, then got on with teaching English properly when he wasn’t looking.

I’m probably not even halfway through my career yet, and I’m a little ashamed of my early-onset cynicism.  I don’t want to be the sort of person that mocks others’ interests and I know a lot of the people posting about teaching are genuinely desirous to share their ideas and improve themselves, but I can’t help thinking that among them there are others engaged in a certain degree of metaphorical photoshopping, a need to self-present as the ultra-caring Miss Honey-esque superteacher.  I am not Miss Honey.  I am sometimes grumpy, often tired, occasionally underprepared, and I don’t have unending compassion for every single child in my care.  Some of them get right on my tits and there are handful I actually hope end up in prison.  But I do love my job.  Honestly, I do.  But it’s the love of someone who’s been in the relationship for decades, for whom the initial thrill and romance has long passed.  What’s replaced it is something more fundamental, part of who I am even, but infinitely less Instagrammable.  (I should know – my Instagram account has been open for nearly two months and has zero followers.)

With the demise of Twitter and the rise of its rivals, it does seem like a good time to re-engage and re-assess what’s out there, to try to shed a little of my cynical calloused exterior that’s built up over the years.  Please don’t tell pre-2023 me this, but since opening my accounts for this blog I’ve found plenty to enjoy among the teaching communities, particularly on Bluesky and Mastodon.  And if you are one of the shrill and shiny superteachers I’ve mentioned, I hope I’ve not offended you too much and please don’t let it dampen your enthusiasm.  If you genuinely feel that way about your job then that’s admirable, and you should totally keep on doing you.

(I mean, maybe do you over on Threads, though.  They love that sort of shit over there.)