The Live Wire

Brett's Blog

Brett Wigdortz

22 September 2009

This is my first blog, which I hope will become a regular occurrence. My goal from these notes is to share Teach First's mission and progress with a wider audience, to hopefully stimulate some debate, and to gain feedback on ways we can better achieve our mission.

For those of you who don't know our mission (and if you're a Teach First staff member, teacher, or Ambassador (alumni), then you have no excuse for not knowing as I repeat our mission every time we are together), we are a charity working "to address educational disadvantage by transforming exceptional graduates into effective, inspirational teachers and leaders in all fields."

This comes from our belief that the current situation – where children's educational achievement is tightly correlated with their parental income – is unjust, archaic, and unnecessary. We believe that all children can succeed educationally and that the best way to help them to do so is by ensuring they have the best (and the best supported) adults to teach and lead them.

Our intake of "exceptional graduates" aren't exceptional because they all got firsts from the top universities (most of them didn't) or because they can speak Ancient Greek backwards while standing on their heads. They are exceptional because they've gone through our rigorous assessment process which looks for the eight competencies we believe you need to show to be a truly exceptional teacher and leader – humility, respect and empathy; interaction skills; knowledge (teaching subject and the programme); leadership; planning and organising; problem solving; resilience; and the all-important self-evaluation.

Three weeks ago, we saw off our largest group of these new teachers, who had just finished six weeks residential training and are teaching in 170 schools across England. Early news from the front-line has been positive for these 480 members of our 2009 cohort. In the weeks to come, I'll share some stories I'm hearing from them, from other teachers and Ambassadors of Teach First and, more broadly, some of our views of the policy shake-ups that look to be on the horizon in this election year. I'm sure the party conferences will provide much food for thought!

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