My name is Costas and I live in Whanganui. I'm 25 years old and about a month away from completing my secondary teacher training in English and Drama.

I decided to go into teaching mostly for the satisfaction of feeling like I was doing something worthwhile. I have never been especially motivated by money and would prefer a job where I am able to mix with a lot of different kinds of people and help guide young people towards their future.

I had a lot of influential teachers growing up and have always felt like teachers are some of the most important people in terms of shaping who we become as human beings.

Without a doubt teaching is the hardest thing I've done. I come from a family of teachers and I thought I had a fairly solid idea about the workload. I was wrong. It is very demanding.

Most days I am up at half past six reading over my lesson plans for the day. When school finishes I spend my evening planning future lessons as well as creating resources (worksheets or power points to assist my lessons) and marking student work.

It's physically demanding being up on your feet all day as well as mentally demanding in terms of focusing on student queries and monitoring classroom behaviour.

I've taught small classes as well as bigger classes. I would say that any class over 25 feels 'big'. I would love to teach smaller classes of around 20 as it is easier to keep everyone on task and there is more time to individually assist students.

I've been extremely fortunate this year to witness some exceptional teaching through my training. I can say with complete honesty that every teacher I've seen in the classroom has been dedicated, thorough and very good at what they do.

Each of my associate teachers (who are in charge of guiding me while on placement) has helped me in more ways than I can even begin to mention. I've learnt screeds from all of them.

The most satisfying thing for me is knowing that students leave the classroom having learnt a thing or two. I like seeing the students think when I ask them a question and like it even more when they arrive at the answer!

It gives me a thrill to say I am a teacher and although I am fairly young myself I'm getting used to being called 'Sir'. I would encourage people who are interested in teaching to give it a go. It's incredibly challenging but also very rewarding.

View all contributions