Week 13 – End of Placement One

Introduction

My final days of P1 came around far too quickly; it’s strange to feel so attached to a place I was only at for a couple of months and always knew I would leave. This placement has given me the confidence I needed to kickstart my career in the best way. The staff and the students at the school were phenomenal and I’ll never forget my time there! 

M Shed Trip

This Monday I went to the M Shed on a school trip with the year 8s on the ‘unlocking potential’ scheme. The museum was closed to the public and the students had a private tour of the place, including having a look inside one of the storage units, then they had to pick an item to create a speech about. It was cool to get an insight into how students can be outside of lessons; all of them seemed to really enjoy themselves and had they gave some pretty good speeches as well, particularly considering it was the first time they had done public speaking on this course.

A Christmas Carol

As most of the teachers had year 11 parents evening, I had the opportunity to go with the same group of year 8s to see A Christmas Carol at Bristol Old Vic. I ended up supervising the students that couldn’t get home in the 2 hours before the coach got us… safe to say my babysitting experience came into good use! Getting the pizzas and garlic bread ready, finally deciding on a Netflix film and (within reason) letting them chill out in any way they wanted. The students were so well behaved… much to my surprise! 

Another member of staff came along me… there was an awkward moment where she thought I was in charge (she isn’t a teacher and just presumed I was a teacher there) English and I had to let her know that actually I wasn’t a qualified teacher and I’m pretty sure I am not allowed to have the kids on my own! 

There was a lot of waiting around involved… we got there at 6:10 and it doors didn’t open until around 6:45 annoyingly… we were also told the students couldn’t get drinks which was slightly odd… so I had 15 12/13 year olds complaining they were thirsty… at least the pizza meant they weren’t hungry as well! When it was finally time to let us into the theatre we had a slight issue with the seats… in that a couple of seats did not exist and another school had some of the same seats as us. Luckily it wasn’t too busy, so we just sat in spare seats.

 After I had a closer look at the tickets, 15 minutes into the show, I saw that actually we had been taken to the wrong level… we should’ve been on the level below us. As well as this, the kids were promised ice cream and only got one small packet of haribo each…. To say the organisation wasn’t great is most definitely an understatement!

At the end of the show more madness occurred as the other member of staff told the kids to make their way downstairs; then proceeded to have a chat to someone she knew who worked there. I frantically made my way through the hordes of strangers praying I would be able to count all 15 of them at the bottom. The second I found them all together at the bottom of the stairs (I am still over the moon at how well behaved these students were), I decided that we would all go together to the toilets, so I could keep an eye on everyone. At this point, the other staff member came and decided to say to them that if they didn’t need the toilet, they could go with her… walking outside as she said that. 

I had no idea how many children she had with her… no idea if we had them all again. Trying to keep my cool, I led the others to the toilets asking them who had come with me because I had no idea!!!! Thankfully, when we eventually found the others again, everyone was accounted for and we made our way back to school, obviously with another chorus of ‘All I want for Christmas is You’. 

To top it all off, we were 15 minutes late – resulting in some angry parents on the phone to some of the kids and one by in particular got quite stressed and upset as a result of this. Another boy’s mum took a further 15 minutes to turn up… he then told me that she had made him late to his own birthday party and they started bowling without him! Poor kid! 

It’s safe to say I was more stressed that evening than I had been when I was project leader for UNIT (a group for children/teens aged 9-18 with Asperger’s Syndrome) and SIBS (a group for children aged 7-13 who have a sibling with a disability). 

Saying Goodbye

My farewells began on Thursday; a lot of my students seemed upset that I was going which was sweet… granted they probably won’t remember me after Christmas but feels good at the time! Some of my favourite messages from the students:

‘You were the best teacher I ever had’

‘It will not be the same without you’

‘Thanks for the hard work it helped me learn’

‘Thank you miss! You have inspired me and have been a great teacher! Thank you for pushing me to my best potential, you have made me feel special’

‘Thank you for always helping me and I hope you apply to work with us again as you have been the best’ 

‘Thankyou for giving me confidence when I needed it’

And perhaps the highest of praise from one of my year 8s – ‘You were a decent teacher J’ 

Reflections on P1

Placement 1 has been the best experience for me. Obviously there have been some low points but these have been massively outweighed by the high points. I have seen first-hand the progress the majority of my students have made, and I have loved the feeling of standing in front of a class, teaching them about the subject I am most passionate about. I am completely gutted to be leaving that school, but it is time to move on and look towards the excitement and nerves of moving to a new school.

Teaching Targets

Last week’s targets:

Pacing – Yeah pacing is going to have to be a focus for next placement. I’m getting there slowly, just need to get my head around what the salient parts of the lessons are, so I know exactly what must get done in the hour I have with them.

Behaviour management – Just as I thought I was getting somewhere with my year 9s, the last lesson I had with them was actually mental – to the point where I had to have a disappointed chat with them about how it was my last lesson with them… which led to even more outcries about how I’m ‘abandoning’ them and they will miss me…. Can’t win with that class, but I sure will miss them!!

Targets for the start of p2:

I’m not going to be too ambitious with these targets, as my focus will be settling into the new school to begin with, my main two targets will be:

Learning the names of the students as quickly as possible– I know people have said that this might not be doable, but I think I can learn the majority of names in my first week. 

Knowing who the key members of staff are: AT, PT, Head of faculty, SENCO and DSL

Getting grips to a new behaviour system: I am not sure whether this next school will have RtL again or not, but knowing what system (if any) is in place will be crucial in my first weeks. 

J

Currently Reading:

I didn’t actually end up reading anything this week… due to frantically getting my assignment and review point 1 done.