a crucial role in fostering good well-being, motivation and behaviour in their pupils. If your own well-being is poor, this can impact on the well-being of your pupils. As professionals, we recognise that life is not always easy. There may be circumstances in your personal or professional lives which impact on your well-being. Looking after yourself is important, not only for you but also for your pupils. Many children experience adverse circumstances at home. School should be a place where they can consistently enjoy learning, be happy, feel safe and experience a sense of belonging. If your own well-being is poor, it might be more appropriate to take some time out and get support rather than attempt to continue teaching when you are not well. Your teacher education provider has a responsibility to support your well-being.
Research suggests that there appears to be a causal relationship between teacher and pupil mental health (Harding et al., 2019). Positive teacher–pupil relationships support children and young people to be mentally healthy (Kidger et al., 2012; Plenty et al., 2014). These relationships help children to feel more connected to their school (Harding et al., 2019) and improve their well-being (Aldridge and McChesney, 2018) through fostering a sense of belonging. Research demonstrates that teachers with poor mental health may find it more difficult to develop and model positive relationships with their pupils (Kidger et al., 2010; Jennings and Greenberg, 2009).
School is also a place where pupils can be exposed to high expectation in relation to their behaviour. Some pupils will experience inconsistent boundaries from parents, and they will need time to adjust their behaviour to the expectations of the school context. Supporting pupils to recognise their emotions and regulate them is one of your responsibilities as a teacher. Addressing the consequences of poor behaviour is rarely enough. Children’s behaviour is often a response to an unmet need. You should therefore aim to understand what the child is trying to communicate through their behaviour rather than interpreting poor behaviour as a sign of weakness. Demonstrating empathy and patience will serve you well in teaching.
You will naturally seek to provide lessons that motivate and inspire your learners. Planning tasks that are stimulating and provide opportunities for learning through collaboration and investigation will help you to foster motivation. In addition, planning opportunities for pupils to engage with a broad curriculum will ensure that they can develop interests in a range of subjects.
Setting goals that stretch and challenge pupils
During your lessons you are responsible for ensuring that all children are appropriately challenged so that they make good or better progress. In particular, you will need to ensure that children who are operating at lower stages of cognitive development are not given lower level tasks that result in widening the ability gap between them and their peers. Where appropriate, you should consider how these children might be supported to achieve the same learning outcomes as their peers by providing them with additional adult support, different resources or by breaking the task down further into smaller steps. It might not always be appropriate for children who are working at lower stages of development to work on the same learning objectives as their peers who are operating at higher stages of development, but setting a different task should not be the default ‘fall-back’ position.
You will need to consider how you will meet the needs of children who are operating at higher stages of cognitive development. You can challenge them further by setting them extension tasks or by asking them to apply the skill or concept that you have taught them. Sometimes, it will be appropriate to set these children a completely different task from their peers, provided they are secure with the prerequisite subject content. It is counterproductive to move children on too quickly, particularly if the prerequisite knowledge, skills and understanding required to complete the task are not secure. To ensure an appropriate level of challenge for these children, it is essential that you understand the progression in knowledge, skills and understanding within a unit of work so that you know what the ‘next steps’ in learning are. You must therefore research the progression sequence prior to teaching a unit of work.
You will need to consider how you can support children who are working at lower stages of development through providing planned interventions and responsive same-day interventions to meet their needs. A child who is working at a higher stage of development in the area of mathematical calculations might be working at a lower stage of development within geometry. Therefore, it does not necessarily follow that a child who is weak at one aspect in a subject is weak at all aspects of that subject. This highlights the need for teachers to adopt flexible grouping arrangements and to avoid developing fixed mindsets about children’s abilities. Children may develop misconceptions within a lesson, but they may have demonstrated mastery of the content in the previous lesson. Same-day interventions provide an opportunity to address these misconceptions. Pre-teaching the lesson content prior to the taught lesson is also another useful way of giving children the best opportunity to make progress in the lesson.
Supporting pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds
It is important to recognise that pupils do not choose their social backgrounds and they should not be defined by them. Pupils from poor social backgrounds can achieve well if they are taught by teachers who have high expectations of them and believe that they can achieve well. They should never be educationally impoverished. Their futures are not defined. Education provides them with an opportunity to break away from the cycle of disadvantage that may dominate their lives. Some pupils might need additional resources and interventions to support them in their learning, particularly if they are deprived of books and technology at home. Schools can compensate for this disadvantage by ensuring that pupils have access to the resources they need to support their learning.
Fostering effort, concentration and perseverance
Many children simply give up when they find specific subject content too difficult. However, with sustained effort, concentration and perseverance, they can improve their intelligence. You play a critical role in supporting children to recognise that intelligence is not a fixed trait. They need to understand that investing effort into a task is worthwhile because although the task may be difficult, effort, concentration and perseverance will eventually pay off and they will master it. Discussing things that you find difficult is one way of helping pupils to realise that learning is not always straightforward. In fact, if it is meant to be difficult and it is not difficult, then they are not being suitably challenged.
Working in partnership with parents
Developing effective professional relationships with parents is not always straightforward. Some parents will have unreasonable expectations of you and will attempt to place additional demands on you. Some will frustrate you because their expectations are too low. Some will not want to work with you because they have had negative experiences of teachers during their own education. It is important to keep an open mind. Some parents may be experiencing challenging personal circumstances that may impact on their capacity to engage with you. Building relationships that are positive and underpinned by mutual respect may take some time. Informing them frequently of their child’s successes is one way of establishing positive relationships. Smiling at them can work wonders; so, too, can demonstrating empathy through listening to them when they need to talk to you. Communicating with parents regularly through text messages, newsletters or the school website are also effective ways of keeping parents informed.
Creating a safe and stimulating environment
The primary classroom should provide a stimulating environment in which children can learn. Children need to be encouraged to respect their learning environment
