Full-time high school teacher and part-time ADI Gary Tasker reveals how he embraces the best of both professions to ensure that his learners are ready for the road.
After falling in love with teaching in 1994, Gary hasn’t looked back and is currently an Art and Design/Photography teacher for students aged between 14-18. Last year, he decided to train as an ADI and now works as a part-time instructor at the GMT Driving School.
What was the appeal of becoming a part-time ADI? I had reached a pivotal juncture in my career and was wondering if it was worth studying a Masters in Education to top up my degree. As the Masters degree cost £16k and would offer little benefit in the classroom, I turned my attention to driving instruction as a personal challenge instead.
Critically, I loved the idea of instructing’s ever-changing curriculum. As an art teacher, things tend not to evolve too much; the roads though are ever-changing. Yes, driving lessons are of course underpinned by a series of rules but it is the application of these rules that intrigued me the most – and still does.
How do you fit your part-time ADI work in around your full-time teaching career? I’d imagined that I would be teaching 2-3 lessons per week but I was wrong! I need to turn people away weekly now, which I hate doing but a personal life would be difficult if I said “yes” to everyone. I make life easy on myself by putting the right students in the right locations at the right time. Getting my diary right at the start of the week is crucial in minimising wasted time and I work after school and at weekends before 1pm. When I need to mark or plan, etc. for school, I do it at night.
How does your school teaching inform your ADI instructing style? This is the most interesting part of my journey so far. Class teaching turns you into a reflective practitioner. You can’t be a school teacher now without the constant pressure to be better and get better results; the national league table sees to that. So how do you assess how good a school teacher is? You look at their output – the achievement of their pupils in exams and the progress made against targets.
My car classroom is the same; I love the individual challenges my students come with and it’s a puzzle to try and decode their particular issues. I have never said “Oh well, I can’t fix that”. It’s not in my vocabulary. It does lead to pressure but as long as it is me putting the pressure on myself, I’m fine with that.
What can the worlds of schooling and ADIing learn from one another? There is one amazing feature of ADI training that would improve class teachers no end; core comps. Teachers tell school students what is not quite right or how to improve – it’s what Ofsted is looking for. But with ADIing, you question why something is incorrect but this kind of analysis is rarely explored within the classroom; it’s hard to when you’re teaching 25-30 kids at once. Finding out though why a fault has occurred is actually a very powerful educational tool.
Also, driving instructing is one of the purest forms of education and without the constant change of governments getting in the way, you can get things done in the way you know will work rather than being told what to do by a think tank that has zero experience. In education, goalposts shift often and it drives great teachers out of our profession.
As a driving instructor, yes, we get a check test as we should – and I can’t wait for my first one as it seems to be the only opportunity for external critique – but there are no league tables, no pass rate pressures or limitations on personal life. It’s just pure one-on-one training with a student who desperately wants to be there and is overwhelmed by the life skill training you are providing. Everyone remembers their driving instructor. That’s what it’s all about.
One thing I would love to see in the ADI world is more sharing of good practice like we do in schools. I would love to sit in with an experienced ADI or have one sit in with me; when I first qualified, I felt blind and unsupported. As a Newly Qualified Teacher in a school though, you are constantly monitored and given the feedback necessary to progress and become better.” – Gary Tasker on what the ADI world can learn from the world of education.
Would you recommend your part-time approach to other professionals? I love teaching, I love the idea of the relationship. If you feel the same, no matter what you do, go for it. The biggest consideration is how you are with other people, especially young people with tough pasts. Their communication and understanding ability will be far below yours – so ask yourself if you can empathise with them and find common ground. If so, then do it. If not, be cautious.
What’s your favourite part of being an ADI? I love the satisfaction of telling students that they have made enough progress to go for a test. It’s like a mini celebration. My least favourite part is the test itself. It’s like waiting in a 1950s hospital for your firstborn when a student is out on test – I hate it. And when they do pass, you know you have just lost a student and you will rarely see them again. It’s always hard to lose students.
What’s been your biggest ADI learning experience? Differentiating the curriculum. The training breaks subjects into two; a basic learner and an advanced learner. This level of differentiation is not enough to deal with the range of students you get. I now break every topic into three rather than two – it’s an approach that works 99% of the time.
What advice would you give someone starting out on a career in driving instruction? Be careful of pink badge contracts. My brother fell foul of a year contract when his pink badge was only valid for six months. There is a lot of good advice out there about trainee contracts, so get it. Otherwise, I just went through the process, used good trainers and subscribed to driving-instructor.tv. I passed everything first time on a shoestring budget because I worked very hard and sought good advice.
Finally, how does Theory Test Pro help your pupils? The biggest problem with students learning the theory is they take endless mock tests until they memorise the answers. The best part about TTP is that it gives you the reasons behind the answers, which leads to actual learning and an understanding of the topic.
