"Teaching is a work of heart."

I honestly can't remember how I came to the decision that I wanted to be a teacher. There isn't a standout teacher from my life that influenced me (while I had many good ones!) and there is no great back story so I won't pretend like there is. I have always enjoyed working with children. They are funny and loving and innocent. They don't judge. To this point in my career, is teaching everything I thought it would be? Probably not. I don't know what I thought was going to happen. I didn't expect unicorns and rainbows every day but to some extent I thought it would be easier. Not easy, just not so emotionally draining all the time. We (most of us) care A LOT. During my first year of teaching, I honestly had no clue what I was doing. Maybe I did but I sure felt lost. I think most first year teachers are in that same boat. Somehow we figure out how to survive the first year, hopefully the children learn something, and we move on. With experience comes confidence and better understanding. I enjoy teaching and I love the creative side of things. I like making things and coming up with new ideas (something I am definitely missing this year!!). Back in Horry County, it was normal for people to come in often and observe my teaching and talk with my students. When that first started happening I remember being really stressed about it. I like constructive feedback but it's in the nature of a teacher to worry. No one likes to feel judged and there is always a fear of doing something wrong. After a while, having people come in and observe didn't really phase me. I was used to it and so were the kids. Sometimes we would have special visitors (superintendent, math consultant, etc.) so we would "fluff" things up a bit to make it more of a WOW but for the most part we carried on as normal. Fast forward to today, teaching in the UK. At my school, this is not how things work. There are NEVER rainbows and unicorns. And so my story about OFSTED begins...

When I first started teaching here in the UK, Ofsted was a name that kept coming up over and over again. I'd like to bet that I am not the only American person that has no clue what Ofsted is. When you google Ofsted it says "Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills. We inspect and regulate services that care for children and young people, and services providing education and skills for learners of all ages. Ofsted is a non-ministerial department." I still wasn't really sure what this meant. Of course I asked lots of questions and the general idea is that basically every school in the UK is given a rating by Ofsted. Your school can be considered outstanding, good, requires improvement, or inadequate. From what I understood, if your school is rated good/outstanding, Ofsted would basically leave you alone for a few years before another inspection. If you are a requires improvement school you should expect another inspection at any given time. I have no clue about inadequate schools. Knowing how things work here, they probably shut it down and blow it up or something ridiculous. Kidding! (I think?) The way that it was presented to me by the heads of my school at the beginning of the year was that when Ofsted declared they were coming for a visit we would be given a days notice, stay late tidying and preparing for them and then endure several days of intense observations, meetings, questioning, etc. I was also told by my colleagues to definitely expect a visit from Ofsted this year. I believe the last rating of my school was a requires improvement score, even though Early Years (Reception) scored good to outstanding. We get our own score. The school thought Ofsted was coming the end of last year but since they didn't show, it was a given that at some point this year it would happen.

I was uneasy with the idea of Ofsted based on what I was told for several reasons. The way it was presented to me was that some random people that may or may not have ever taught in a classroom would be coming to make judgements about me and my teaching methods based on a single day of observations that could last up to only a few minutes long. I was also under the impression that when Ofsted comes for a visit, we "fluff" data percentages and "put out the good China as if the Queen was coming for tea." If you are a teacher reading this then you know exactly how I am feeling at this point. I completely disagree with making up data and doing anything different from a normal day just because a visitor is coming, especially if the visitors are coming to see a normal day. Yes, we might tidy up a bit more and yes, we might go the extra mile to make our lessons more engaging, BUT I think certain things should be done every day and we shouldn't make it all up and do things out of the ordinary. As I said earlier, I don't mind people giving feedback about my teaching. I like to have feedback both positive and negative. This year there has very rarely been anyone in to watch me teach. Maybe 2 or 3 times. This means that no one truly knows who I am as a teacher. If Ofsted were to come in on a day where maybe it wasn't a good lesson or some kind of drama was going on, no one would be able to fight my corner and explain that it was just a one off and no one would know that I am actually not a terrible teacher. I don't like that. Anyway, as this year has gone on and we didn't have "the call," I think tension started to build and we had a staff meeting all about Ofsted because we knew it was coming at some point and hopefully sooner rather than later.

The meeting about Ofsted was basically to explain how it would all work. Ofsted would call the day before, no later than 12 noon and speak to the head, ask questions, request parking spaces and ask for lunch to be provided. The executive head of our school is actually an Ofsted inspector so you would hope that he would have our school fully prepared as he knows exactly what they are looking for. He explained to us that Ofsted inspections would be 2 days long. They would never call on a Thursday or Friday because they don't give schools weekends to prepare and they need 2 full days for observations. On the first day of observations, several inspectors would come round, in and out of our rooms all day observing us, questioning us and the children, and taking in the environment. The second day they would look at evidence, books, and follow up with anything they may have missed from the first day. Their visit would also include talks with parents, school governors, and a teacher and parent online survey. Our head told us that when they call, he didn't want us staying late to put up new displays and tidy everything. He said he would rather the focus be on making sure we have good solid lessons planned. Ofsted don't look at lesson plans. The meeting ended and several weeks went by before we finally had THE CALL.

On a Tuesday right before half term (for my American friends, half term is a week off from school!), we found out that Ofsted was coming to visit us on Wednesday and Thursday, our last 2 days before the break. We had no school on Friday, it was just before a holiday so great freaking timing...of course. I wasn't really nervous because I wanted to continue on as always. I didn't want it to be a song and dance. They were looking for what we do every day and that is what the score should be based on. Because this whole idea of Ofsted is still completely crazy to me, it didn't really affect me like it did many others. People were staying at school til 10 at night, they ordered pizza for those that were going to stay late to get things together and ready, and on the first day Ofsted were there the parking lot was full by 7 am which NEVER happens. I'm all for doing your best and showing off what you can do but it really puts A TON of pressure on teachers.

On Wednesday morning we met with the 3 Ofsted inspectors and already the lead inspector made me realize that I had the total wrong impression of Ofsted...sort of. She really put me at ease and made clear that they weren't coming to judge us as individual teachers. It was an overall picture of the school that they were looking at. Basically, they would look at what we were teaching (more so the content and how it was presented) rather than judge our teaching. I was thinking GREAT. It was made to sound so much better than what I thought. I wasn't worried and the day was actually really good. We had one inspector with us in Reception most of the day. She asked questions, spoke with parents that gave incredibly positive feedback, observed children, looked through books of evidence, and met with our lead teacher to talk about the data. I'm not going to really talk too much about the data side of things at this point because it makes me cross. Let's just say that we had our data sheet and then we had an Ofsted data sheet. We all left feeling positive about how things went. It was a very stressful day and I think everyone was looking forward to a glass of wine at the end of it! Everyone but poor Laura. Since she is pregnant, her end of the day thought was "I wish I was a caterpillar." It was very funny to hear her say that randomly!

Day 2 of Ofsted was when the crazy started. Unfortunately one of our TA's was out due to a poorly child so we were down to 5. Luckily she was replaced but it is just never the same. It was just after 7 am (the kids don't come until 8:40) and we were approached about finding evidence in our learning stories to prove all of these different things. We didn't have enough evidence of challenge and we needed to show more boys writing and we needed to show more evidence of growth in our EAL students and blah, blah, blah. It wasn't a great way to start the day when negative everything is being thrown in your face. We found what we could, rushed to set things up for the day because we were now behind, and didn't have any Ofsted anyone come in throughout the whole morning. The lead inspector hadn't come to us yet so we knew she would be in at some point. She ended up coming in almost immediately after lunch. It wasn't a terrible input but I didn't feel like it was the best learning she could have seen. Apparently she liked what she saw though so that was ok. This has been a couple of weeks ago now so I don't remember all the other drama but the day ended with a meeting between teachers and the lead inspector. She basically wanted to know why we all enjoyed working at the school, how we feel about the heads,  and how we all work together throughout the school. Considering almost half the staff is leaving at the end of the year, it was bloody annoying to hear people start spitting out all these positive things left and right when it isn't actually how people feel AT ALL. I just sat in silence because my days at this place are numbered and for that I am thankful.

The Ofsted rating is kept secret by the administration of school for 2 weeks until it is published by Ofsted. We've just been given the official word today that our school overall rating is "Good." I'm pleased for the school even though I don't agree with the system AT ALL. It's hard for me to put all the nonsense and craziness into words but I'm trying to put pieces of it out there. I'm glad I got to experience an Ofsted visit but again, it is a stupid, ridiculous thing that they do here. Just a few days ago it came out in the news that a new lead Ofsted inspector or something has been appointed. She has some educational experience but has never actually been a teacher before. How can that even be possible? If you are going to observe teachers and rate schools, you really need to have experienced some time in the classroom. That's my opinion anyway. There is a lot more to Ofsted than what I've said here. This is just a very basic explanation and I'm sure I'll remember more details later that I'll want to say about the whole thing. For now I am just counting down the days. I realise that I should probably change the name of my blog from 'The Travelling Teacher' to 'The Whiny Teacher that Complains A Lot." I guess I just feel like I have nothing to lose by putting this out there because I'm not going to teach here again. I'm just saying what everyone feels really.