David William on the importance of literature, the role of parenthood in teaching, and bridging the disadvantage gap through education.

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David William is a secondary literature teacher from Pontefract UK who currently lives and works in Leeds. He has been teaching since 2003, is a father to two children, and the Strategic Lead for the Quality of Education at his school. David is passionate about teaching literature in innovative ways and using education to stop deprivation cycles.

How I got into teaching

I am dyslexic, and when I was growing up it was possible for students with dyslexia to get assisted places at private schools with specialist dyslexia provision, which was what happened to me. I had a weird upbringing because I went to school with very affluent people, but I went home to a council estate in a deprived northern town. My brother went to our local school. He has the same dyslexia I do, but he didn’t get any funding and found school hard whereas I had support. So I’ve always known what a big difference education can make; it’s the only thing that can break that deprivation cycle.

I decided to become a teacher on the same day the first Lord of the Rings film came out. I was working at Reuters in London as a sales executive and I’d just made a lot of money selling this product to Shell. I was sitting in my office and I was struck by this thought: Shell doesn’t need any more money, and neither does my company. It was this really existential moment where I sat there thinking… my life is pointless. What I’m doing is absolutely pointless. A friend of mine had just gone into teaching, and he’d been trying to persuade me to join him because he thought I’d be good at it, but I’d never seen myself as a teacher. The teachers at my school had always been really serious and stern. They were just like the professors at Hogwarts; my school was an old building, they wore gowns on special occasions, and I didn’t see myself being like that, but I knew I needed to do something meaningful. I quit my job that day, phoned up Leeds University and persuaded them to let me on a teaching course, then I phoned my old school to ask for two weeks of work experience, which I needed to get on the course. I did my first day of work experience the next day, after I watched the Lord of the Rings. It was weird. The whole thing was a whim really.

My first experiences as a teacher

I walked into my first classroom with just my university training and not a lot of support from my new school. Back then in my old school it was sink or swim for an NQT; if you couldn’t survive you failed. Nowadays that isn’t thinkable, but somehow I survived. The first kids I taught thought they were quite wise, they were sarcastic and cool, and somehow throwing my personality into that mix worked; I don’t really know why. I didn’t fit in with my own conception of a teacher. I wasn’t stern, I didn’t shout, I was relatively young and I had similar taste to the kids, so I wasn’t who they expected me to be, and I think that won them over. I didn’t dismiss what they were interested in. Adults can dismiss the things young people are into, and I think that’s wrong. For the kids I teach now, the Fast and Furious franchise is the epitome of cinema, so every Christmas I watch one of those movies with them. Now, two of the students I had during my first year teaching work in my school, which is really weird. They have their own kids, they’re married. It’s scary, because of that I’m reminded of my first days as a teacher pretty often.

What I wish I knew in my first year

If you can’t command your students’ attention at the beginning of the class then you can’t move on. When you’re first starting out and you’re frustrated, the temptation is to just get on with the lesson even if some of them aren’t listening. Unless they give you their attention and they’re looking at you and giving you that respect, it doesn’t work. Even if it takes twenty minutes to get there, it’s worth it, because that’s the foundation you’re working from.

7 years ago I moved to a school in a very deprived area. Behaviour management is crucial to success in the classroom. We talk a lot about your body language and facial expressions. We also talk about giving students clues that are both verbal and non-verbal. If all the teachers manage behaviour in the same way, that’s also helpful because the students need routine. We think of routine as a negative thing sometimes but for many of them, routine is a comfort blanket. They like to know: this is my teacher, we do things this way, our books are always in this place. Even when they get older it’s the same. As boring as it sounds, routine is king.

The impact of parenthood on my teaching

My experience of being a parent has changed my teaching massively. I’ve become more patient and understanding, and I’ve come to see students as people who are developing, rather than fixed personalities. For example, if a student has a negative attitude, I see it as a part of his or her character right now. It will change.

I learned how to drive quite late in life, so I used to get the train into work. A lot of the time I’d go between two stops close to the local college, where a lot of my ex students attended. They would get on and we’d have a short chat. I saw that most of them pull it ‘round. They change and become different people. They often understand the lessons you taught, just much later on.

Being a father, now if I have a problem with a student in a class I consider the underlying issue more often. Did they sleep last night? Are they doubting themselves and using an excuse as an escape valve? Is there something going on at home? Parenthood has made me a lot better at my job and a lot kinder. When I was the head of English at a previous job, I interviewed teachers often, and one of our governors said a good metric is to ask myself whether I would trust the interviewee with my kids. That’s a great way of thinking about students, because you ask yourself whether you would want someone treating your child like that and it changes your attitude.

How to encourage kids to love reading

My son is a budding writer. He’s writing a series called Robo-Forever, and he’s written two out of thirteen so far. He’s working on the merchandise for it, which is a bit bizarre and wonderful. He loves reading and writing, and his Christmas list is just books. It’s not something that was ever forced on him, he just sees me reading a lot. There’s a stereotype about men in England not reading. My Dad wasn’t an academic man, he was a rugby player and he didn’t finish school, but his Dad was a reader. When I was growing up we had a little alcove filled with my granddad’s books. My Dad used to just leave books around the house for me to discover, and that’s what I’ve done with my son. My daughter is four and she’s not reading by herself yet, but she loves doing phonics, she does them by herself pretty often. Will she be a reader? I don’t know, but it won’t ever be pushed on her. She is discovering it for herself.

As parents we want our kids to like what we like, but if you push something on them, they’ll push back. Instead, we buy my son lots of books and leave them around the house, and eventually he comes to them. It’s a cheap hobby; he picks up so much about story structure and comes out with these outlandish words I’ve never heard. When you read lots of different books you put different bits and pieces together and explore the world through them. That’s how I see learning: like a jigsaw puzzle. I read to my kids actively, and that makes a big difference. It helps them fall in love with stories, but in the end they have to make that choice themselves.

A book is a living, breathing thing. I don’t have a lot of books myself because I tend to give them away to people. If I love something, I’ll give it to someone and ask them to pass it on when they’re done. That way the book doesn’t end up sitting on a shelf for ten years, instead lots of people read it, and if I want to read it again I can buy it again. We have a lot of charity shops near us with great books in them. I take my kids there to choose what they want to read, and the idea is if the book doesn’t engage them, I’ve only lost fifty pence and I’ve given some money to charity, so everyone wins. That way they can investigate what they like. We also have “little free libraries” around where we live. They’re these wooden boxes on poles with books that nobody wants inside. You just take or leave whatever you like.

Gender discrimination in children’s literature & beyond

One of my family members has a very stereotypical view of masculinity, and can’t handle the fact that my son is not into football. He can’t stand sports, but every Christmas she asks if he wants a football or wants some kit. My daughter, on the other hand, is very into football and ‘fighting’ classes. She’s four, and she’s like her mum, she has a natural sporting ability. She’s fantastic; if you kick a ball she knows where to be and how to move her body instinctively. I used to teach a girl who was an excellent football player and she eventually went to college in America to play. People thought she couldn’t do it because she’s a girl. It’s pathetic and it’s outdated and it shouldn’t exist. Some people can put kids into these boxes. Even with clothing; girls’ clothing is all pink with unicorns, and boys are all army prints and video games. I’ve noticed it in children’s literature too and I think that’s a huge problem.

In England, the places to buy books are narrowing; these days it’s typically Amazon or supermarkets. In the book section of the supermarket and in the top amazon lists, the same ten authors for kids are being pushed forward. These authors tend to be quite stereotypical in their divide between the genders. If places are pushing the same few authors, how does someone new break through and become known? We’re limiting our diet. How do kids discover new authors? That’s where school libraries are important because I don’t think many parents would know to leave books around for their children to discover. What if you like reading, but you don’t like reading those kinds of books? I’m especially concerned for boys because the books for them are often heavily stereotyped and badly written. We need to give kids access and choice.

Stories as a way into learning

When I was teaching year 9 last year my wonderful colleague Alex introduced a strategy where we would find sets of books around the school that weren’t being used and read to the students during form time twice a week. We found there was an uptick in the number of students who turned up on time on those days. My assumption was that they were coming earlier because they wanted to see what would happen next. You get into what you’re exposed to, until you’re old enough to go and explore things for yourself. It’s about trying to hook them on literature so they look at stories as something that’s fun and engaging: then they’re more likely to go out and engage with it themselves. My son’s school sends us a newsletter where they tell us what he’s learning about and reading, and they include a list of questions we can ask him to become more involved.

At GCSE in England we often do the British classics, which are wonderful in so many ways, yet there are also great works and brilliant modern writers. It would be great to mix up what they read at GCSE to get them hooked on reading.

Do you have thoughts about the role of literature in your own school community? Do you have stories about teaching students from disadvantaged backgrounds? Reach out to us at zoe@teacherly.io to be on our next Teacherly Story.