As someone has mentioned, can’t you make the subject interesting to you in the first place? I know I’d love to be paid to learn about the science behind food.

I’m a college lecturer and pedagogy mentor. I work with colleagues to introduce new teaching/learning techniques. Doing so I teach classes in pretty much any subjects (sports, health and beauty, drama, music, tourism, business….). Granted these are mostly one offs, but I have been in your situation too. There is plenty you can do with limited subject knowledge and still have plenty of learning happening.

If class management is a problem then get help with that. What you will learn from teaching in a difficult environment will stay with you and you will be able to apply that whatever the subject. It sounds like the situation has already escalated with your students as they have probably sensed your malaise in the classroom. That is not a nice place to be, but every teacher has been there.

Hope for you and your students that you get it sorted 🙂

I’m an NQT, finding behaviour management a pain in a bad school as we have no power to kick kids out.

Just don’t take bad behaviour personally. It’s not your fault that some kids have poor back drug infested background or no respect for anyone.

Keep riding though – kills stress.

Some schools are better than others.

Can’t wait to finish my NQT year and off to a better school without drug addicted/benefit scrounging parents who don’t care or have zero idea to raise their kids.

Northwind – Does the industry have that much information sharing? For me, the original job would just mysteriously vanish from my CV and they’d certainly not be getting asked for a reference.

Possibly not: I’m a goody two shoes I guess… When they say you may be summarily dismissed if it turns out you lied/omitted something I tend to fess up or tell the truth – I don’t like it hanging over me. It may work for the OP though.

I still say try for a bit longer, try to be positive and get/use all the support you can (in the process raising your issues with management – it’s their problem too) pick up what skills you can (sounds like your behaviour management will come on leaps and bounds!)and if you still want to leave, do so in a professional way, without setting fire to any bridges. Or defecating on the head’s desk ;-)>

Chris.

Behaviour management is tough. Its mind over matter, you need to think like a jedi. Once you get it in your head they wont misbehave they wont.

Behaviour management isn’t usually an issue for me, but it is becoming more relevant here as I’m in an environment and an area I’m not familiar with, I think, as mentioned, that the pupils are probably picking up that I haven’t a clue, it would be great given the time to look into the subject more and become knowledgable about it but I feel I’d need a month or two just studying it myself, not trying to learn it at the same time I’m planning, doing demos, running practicals, marking, assessing, trying to get groups through GCSEs, teaching and all the other admin stuff. I’m just going to talk to my mentor and the other staff to see what they suggest, as my mentor (ICT) said, it’s the blind leading the blind. The department is being as helpful as they can but they have to teach too, they said they were hoping food would be dropped in favour of Product Design, now that would be perfect!