When you started teaching...

[TheFifthKey]

The thread about how office jobs have changed got me thinking about how teaching has changed (apart from turning from a great job into a crap one...)

I started in 2003. Nobody used emails and we had internal memo envelopes used between buildings. This carried on for years! Not every room had a computer and we did registers on Bromcoms (handheld things, like overgrown Kindles, that did registers and you could also do reports etc on. They used AA batteries and were always running out of power! You'd have to send a kid down to the office for batteries if you didn't keep a secret stash).

No projectors, the odd Smart board which was regarded as the very height of technology (even though they were utterly shit to write on). Mobile phones weren't an issue as hardly any kids used them and even then they were basic ones. No name badges, no passes, no lanyards, all doors left unlocked all the time and half the site was barely even fenced.

People used to go to the pub on Friday after school and on my last day of teaching practice the department took me to the pub at lunchtime and we had a drink!

I'm not a teacher but you're all bringing back the memories.
I am a 90s kid so I remember all of it.
The big TV on the rolling thing with the locked cupboard.
The blackboard
Fast forward to secondary school and the installation of the digital boards which most people didn't know how to use but it was around the footie time.
I remember using Paint in junior school on the old computer and printing it. The room was full of those fat white monitors. Secondary school later on had the upgraded flat screens.

The projectors and the teacher using the pens to write on those see through sheets whilst we looked at the projection.

Fond memories of school! You teachers are awesome.

Not a teacher, I worked in another industry altogether but thanks for bringing back memories of the heady smell of Banda. My first job :-)

Do remember the huge telly's on wheels from primary school in the 1970's.

Minus the blackboards- my current school was very like the old times in attitudes up until a year ago. The head was so laid back. Good-will? Absolutely, in abundance, lots of laughter in the staff room, supply staff flocking to get permeant jobs there, all that. Then she left and has been replaced by cooperate head. I don't recognise the place.

6 weeks notice of OFSTED ... I'll stop in a minute

Ah, I started before OFSTED was invented
Although when they were first invented, they gave 12 weeks notice - it was horrendous - you spent 12 weeks just being expected to spend 16hours a day producing things for the "performance" that was OFSTED week. It was a GREAT improvement when it changed to no notice.

Who remembers teaching in the 2002 (?) World Cup when all the matches were early morning so all the kids were allowed to watch them in the hall instead of lessons - I think we ended up starting late one day to let the kids watch footy at home (this was secondary)

Not a teacher but this thread is stirring up wonderful memories!

BBC computers. One for the whole school.

A little robot thing that looked like one of those roomba vacuum things but you could programme it to go certain directions - 'roamer' it might have been called.

I left primary just before literacy and numeracy hour came in. Our teachers seemed very happy to go with the flow - I remember asking a question about trees in year six and the teacher took us all out to the wooded area across the road to demonstrate something.

The jolly fish? Haddock? Songbook.

Lovely thread! 1991 first year teaching with a mixed yr/1 class. Chalk board, paper register, everything handwritten, photo copying strictly monitored! We also went to the pub on a Friday, and the head wouldn't think twice about telling the parents off (some of whom she'd taught!) if she felt their parenting was inadequate in some way!

Also just remembered the art teachers who taught sixth form Friday afternoons would teach drinking mugs of 'ribena' (red wine!!!!)

I was 2003 - I had an OHP and had to wheel the telly in to use it. I also had VHS.

I loved OHPs. Nothing like letting kids loose with film and pens . No computers needed.

Started 2004.

I remember bromcoms my placement school had them and was so proud of how progressive they were.

Ringing up schools and getting application forms posted to you.

LEA advisors

Everyone moaning about Ed Balls. Then we got Gove

1995. I asked for my own OHP. We had yo book a TV. I had a white board & pens. You had your own class lists & paper registers. We also we t yo the pub Friday lunchtime and again Friday after school (and Thursday nights!).

I started teaching 30 odd years ago. At my first interview all the candidates were invited into the Head's study for a glass of sherry at 11.00am. I was chatting to some students the other day about paper registers. I liked my tutor group one because you could quickly see if it was anyone's birthday.

Last year we broke into a cupboard in the department office that nobody had a key for. It had evidently been locked at least 15 years ago as it was full of OHP pens and films, blank VHS tapes, stencils and other completely obsolete stuff. I remember feeling myself very fancy and up-to-the-minute in an interview for an NQT job because I'd printed a poem onto an acetate to annotate. If you used a wipeable pen you could use them again!

Pub every Friday lunchtime for lunch and a drink. One bbc computer in the class. Y2 children had free access to glue guns, hammers etc and did art or DT activities almost every day.I just gave the head a few handwritten pages outlining my plans for the half term. I looked after one of my pupils for about 15 minutes at the end of every day because her mum didn't get out of work until after pick up time.

Ah, the bromcoms. When we decided ours were obsolete, they got packaged up and sent to our partner school in Africa. I'm not sure how charitable that would have proved to be for our fellow teachers out there...

1994

Banda machines and handwritten worksheets. One computer in the staff room that no-one knew how to use.

Registers which needed totalling until we got Bromcoms. Used to be able to send each other messages on those.

Huge TV on wheels. Blackboards. OHPs were the new thing - revolutionary.

Predicted grades filled in by hand on sheets of paper. Whole school timetable and all cover handwritten.

Huge filing cabinets of resources - sets of 30 sheets for a topic.

Smoking room next to the toilets. Pub at lunchtime on Friday.

A million years away now

And reports were all handwritten in carbon books. Each child had a report book which stayed with them for the full five years and you had to write one under the other on A4 sheets. No-one was allowed to take them home so we all sat til six every night for a week to get them done. Sometimes the last person out would take a set away, and inevitably that would be the one that you needed when you came in at 7.30am to get yours done.

And timekeeping - staff coming in five minutes before the bell. We weren't allowed to leave until ten minutes after the bell at the end of the day, and people used to sit in the staff room, literally watching the clock and jumping up at 3.35 on the dot

1996 .

Yy to Banda machines, asking the secretary for permission to use her photocopier (the only one in the school) and roller blackboards. Had a basic RM computer in the classroom with a printer which printed on paper with the holes down the side.

All paperwork hand written. Termly plans based on a topic on one side of A3. Weekly plans on A3 and no more. In note form as it was just for you.

Our lovely HT used to send one of us NQTs to the local shop with £20 every Friday as soon as the kids left. We were instructed to come back with fags, lager and wine to be shared in the staffroom with whoever felt like stopping for a drink and/or smoke. I think she saw it as a way of getting any worries off your chest so that you could go home feeling happier.

reading these it is clear that we were all pretty stoned from the Banda fumes!! no wonder things were a lot more relaxed. I taught in a school where the head and Dh were terrific musicians, their singing assemblies could go on for a good hour and a half, anything you had planned for the morning would roll over to the next day, you just had to remember to take a good supply of polos into the hall to sustain the back row of fellow teachers.

I would like to point out before anyone says we did no work that of my last class of very working class children three got scholarships to very prestigious London schools (Highgate and City of London) , and without tutoring!

another memory is getting younger children changed for pe, no faffing around with t shirts and shorts. They took off their top layers and did inside pe barefoot in their pants and vests.

We also had a wonderful school nurse, who heard all our woes about life and health and insisted on booking us into the local well woman clinic. Unfortunately something went wrong with the appointment timings and at one point five of us were sitting in dressing gowns in the clinic while the Head and DH did an impromptu music assembly (see above - they were used to it!)

I remember arriving at school at 7.30am once in the 90s, (I'd stayed at a friends and they gave me a lift on their way to work). The cleaners looked shocked and it was 8.15 before any other teaching staff appeared. Now I arrive at 7.30am every day and at least half of the teaching staff are already there! (And most of them stay until 6).
I also remember some teachers used to leave staff meetings at 4.30pm, even if it wasn't over, as contractually they were only obliged to stay for an hour, and heaven help anyone who suggested an extra meeting!

I stopped teaching 10 years ago in a minor subject so so much of this seems recent!!

I loved OHP when I first started, coloured pens. Letting the kids do their own ohp mindmaps and being able to instantly share them. Having hidden words to peel off!
That was so "my" era.

My planning was just a jot in my diary as to topic/resources/homework id set..

I couldn't return to the pressures of teaching now!!

Curtes. there's always even staff leaving at the time staff meetings were supposed to finish... usually childcare commitments .