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Idza Idros

Idza Izros (’05) Mathematics, Imperial
Taught Maths Fulham Cross School
Now Teacher, Ellen Wilkinson School

The first day actually went really well. I remember having four lessons out of the five I was meant to teach that day, and everything went smoothly. Lesson five, I remember it was a Year 8 class, set four out of five, and I started teaching, put everything up on the board like I was meant to, and I turned around and a child had crawled under the table and put the chairs in like a tent, and I just thought I don’t actually know what to do now.

Well, when I joined Teach First I thought I’ll do my two years, then I’ll go out in to business or industry, and between my first and second year in Teach First I did a summer placement at an educational organisation, and as I was sat there I thought I don’t really want to go in to the business world, because I’m actually quite inspired and quite interested by what I’m hearing. And that’s when I pretty much decided that it was probably in education for life.

Leaving the school I’m at now is probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. I just remember the two, three days when my new school had given me the time to think about the decision, and I kept going back and forth, and there were tears and lots of calling friends up and asking them what they thought I should do, and pictures of all these kids I’ve taught over the last few years just flash into my mind, and I thought: can I actually leave them?

Quite a few of them were quite upset, and they’ve told me that I’ve been their favourite teacher, and I’ve been the one teacher they could go to, and you don’t really realise that that’s the impact you have on the kids that you’re teaching.

There’s another class that I’ve just recently told that I’m leaving, and I’ve had huge problems with them over the last year, and I thought, okay, this is going to be the easiest class to tell, because they’ll all be thrilled, and they actually refused to talk to me for the rest of the lesson, because they were so angry that I was leaving. And so you walk out thinking I don’t understand what’s going on, but these kids are genuinely attached to you and genuinely sad that you’re going, and that’s when you realise the impact you’ve had.

The fact that you’ve got an organisation that’s so dedicated to raising quality in education is an amazing thing to do, and that you can actually start to see the impact that Teach First Participants are having in London and, indeed, in the rest of the UK now is just amazing to watch and to be part of that’s just a fantastic experience.