Losing your mojo

My first years of teaching were excellent and I thrived in the classroom then a couple of years in I hit a stumbling block, I suddenly lacked confidence and felt I couldn't teach. It felt like I'd lost my spark, I was trying so hard to be 'outstanding' and help my students progress, using all the tools and strategies I was given in training but my lessons never seemed that successful. A close friend and colleague recently chatted with me about feeling similar to this on returning from maternity leave, she referred to it as losing her mojo and that in the same way her usual 'buzz' seemed to have vanished. We discussed how when we both felt like this we had been trying really hard to tick the boxes of what we thought was expected of us and bring in every trick of the trade we had been given. This academic year I started a new post at a new school with a very different demographic to my previous school (where I had spent the first 6 years of my teaching career). I found myself experiencing the same feelings again, my teaching practise did not seem as great as I was used to. However this time was a little different, during the first term I was observed twice and got excellent feedback, but I just wasn't feeling it. I was planning thoroughly and using the pedagogy I had been trained with but things just didn't feel right, despite the positive feedback I was getting. I didn't feel like me. So what did I need to do? Back to basics, that's what! I put the gimmicks, the crazy innovative plenaries and AFL techniques, the to games how style starters on the shelf for a minute and went right back to basics. On both occasions where I was feeling like my teaching and learning was off kilter, I stripped everything back and focused on three things: 1. Knowing and thinking specifically about the students in my classroom. 2. What did I want them to learn? 3. How could I get them to learn it? These may seem pretty obvious, but when you're bogged down with the day to day stresses and strains of working in a school, it's easy to lose sight of what is important. It also allows everything else to click into place when you put this at the heart of your planning. Additionally, doing this made me realise something, I hadn't lost my mojo nor my ability to teach good lessons, I'd lost confidence in myself and my ability and as result was not focussing properly on the important things. I'd started somewhere new and was taking on board a lot of things and adapting to the needs of very different students in a very different school. I just needed to take a set back and re-evaluate things, then take a deep breath and do what I know and can do best. Yes I needed to develop methods and strategies suitable for my new students, but I also needed to stop comparing them to my previous students and lessons and use my natural instincts, combined with my knowledge and understanding of teaching to enable them to learn. Similarly this was the same when I had experienced this earlier on in my career, my confidence had taken a nose dive after one bad lesson observation. So I then put all my energies into trying to do better and teach better and as a result I couldn't see the wood for the trees. I knew how to teach and adapt, change and improve my practise but I was so wrapped up in trying to do what I thought was expected of me, that I lost sight of what I could do. So next time you're stressed, frustrated with your classes and feel like you've lost your 'mojo' just take a step back, take a deep breath and think about what advice you would give someone else in that situation. Focus on the simple things, and then the rest will feed into your planning later, but most importantly don't lose sight of your students and what you want them to learn. This has helped me regain my confidence and reassure me that I have still have my spark and can help my students learn and develop-I'd just lost the belief that I could.