What I wish I knew with James Troughton

James Troughton is a primary school teacher. His route into teaching took him through 2 non-teaching occupations and a couple of years in South Korea (where he got his first taste of teaching), before returning to England and training to teach with the Essex and Thames Primary Consortium. Although he only qualified in 2014, he is now Assistant Head at Newlands Spring Primary School. He combines this demanding role with fatherhood and being a published author of science fiction stories. He is one busy man!

During our conversation we discussed ...

• The value of teaching abroad to wide your experience.
• The joy of seeing young children get excited by learning.
• The demands posed in your first morning as a teacher and how to get through it.
• The challenge of coping with the hundreds of micro decisions you have to make everyday as a teacher.
• How important it is to be excited by what you are teaching and the value of inspiring children with your passion, whatever that might be, so that they can develop their own unique talents.
• Knowing when to stop working at the end of the day, because more tweaking of the plan is unlikely to make a significant difference to the quality of learning.
• The value of observing other teachers to develop your own teaching strategies.
• Using all you have learnt from other teachers to develop your own unique teaching style. There are loads of ways to be a great teacher, so be yourself, don't try to be like anyone else.

You can connect with James on:

Twitter: @JRTroughton

LinkedIn: James Troughton

You can find out about James' science fiction stories at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7203144.James_Troughton