This post is going to be different to the rest of my posts. Tomorrow is my final day at university, bringing about mixed emotions! Before the exit tutorial (which is in 2 and a half hours time as I am writing this… probably should’ve started this earlier!), we have been asked to write a final reflective post about the year as a whole.
My issue is I don’t know where to start – so I’m just going to see where my brain takes me!
This time last year I was beyond nervous. I was spending my last few months at the nursery I have loved working at (and will be going back to work for the final time in a few weeks!) and still questioning about whether I was making the right choice. You see, to me, working in Early Years education is crucially important, there’s just no funding in it – and I also wanted to seek out something that could stretch me academically too. But I was comfortable in this setting and it had become my safety net for the past 8 years. My home.
Making the transition to the Primary school, where there were a lot of familiar faces from the nursery, made me further question my decision. Would I prefer working with the younger children? When any of the parents at nursery asked me what I was going to do at university, most of them presumed it would be at a primary level, seeing as I was working with their children. This made me constantly question myself, reassuring myself that actually, if I didn’t like secondary as much, I could just find an NQT placement in a primary school.
Then came the first few weeks at uni, where I have made a lot of friends for life, including those who made the brave decision that actually teaching is not for them. But, again, the doubt cloud was hanging over me and the time for me to be in front of a class was approaching quickly. I learned a lot in the first few weeks of uni and had a lot of fun in the process – and I have already used a lot of the activities we looked at then in my practice since.
Before long, it was time to go to my placement school, where I felt at home straight away (despite starting out with a UTI… not the most pleasant!). I was instantly reassured that I wanted to be working in a team of English specialists, where I could combine my love for English with my passion for working with young people (cheesy I know!). My first lesson with the year 7s was not perfect in the slightest, I rambled a lot, relied on my lesson plan heavily and constantly doubted myself. BUT they listened eagerly, answered my questions and actually seemed to like being there. I had completed the first hurdle and I was on a teaching high.
Weeks past and I had my highs and lows. I got into a ridiculous cycle of feeling really down and anxious every Tuesday and Wednesday evening, I’m guessing it was to do with the workload ahead of me. I was still getting my head around teaching and all the trillions of components you have to balance simultaneously and it was taking its toll. Nevertheless, I still loved it.
Then I had my make or break moment. I am certain I will never forget it. The incident when one of my year 9s displayed intimidating and aggressive behaviour in my classroom, where I was not supported by the supply teacher. I can put my hand on my heart and say that if it was not for the support of the English faculty and other teachers that came to my rescue, I would not have wanted to continue. It scared me. I was scared the student would hurt another one of my students in my lesson. But he didn’t. It was resolved and I put in the request to have sessions at uni about extreme behaviour scenarios and how to deal with them (which, sadly, did not happen… but hopefully will for the next cohort). It’s all very well in saying that it comes down to instinct, to experience. But how are we supposed to have that instinct when we have no experience? How do we know where the balance between safeguarding the student displaying aggressive behaviour, safeguarding ourselves and safeguarding the other students? How do we know exactly what to log about the incident and when? How do we know what to do when students see you clearly antagonised and crying? I am not naive, I am aware there is no simple answer these questions, but I believe that there must be some sort of toolkit that can be devised for extreme behaviour. All I wanted was for someone to stand at the front of an EPS session and give top tips about how to manage a situation like this – and other unpleasant situations that we could find ourselves in. We’ve had so much on safeguarding children and prevent, but not that much on safeguarding ourselves.
Luckily, I was able to work closely with their class teacher and regain the rapport and respect I had already built up. It wasn’t long until the end of placement 1 and I was dreading going back to uni. Not because I didn’t enjoy uni, but because I felt like I was leaving behind a family – a family that I will now be rejoining in September!
I worked so flipping hard over the first placement, so I decided to give myself a break over the Christmas holidays. I already knew what I would be teaching and, despite not having the lesson plans, I had an idea of what I could do to begin to prepare myself. That all went out the window. I am still not sure about whether I made the right decision. If I had been able to finish Bleak House and research more about the a-level subjects I would’ve felt a million more times confident and competent in my second placement. However, I finally managed to relax and enjoy myself in a way I hadn’t since September, and it felt great.
The balance between workload and actually having a life outside work is a tricky one with teaching, one I find particularly difficult because I love the job an insane amount. I enjoy researching, lesson planning, marking and heck – I even loved writing the reports (let’s see how long it takes for that to wear off). My second AT’s do it, do later, delegate and don’t do really helped me out and I have found I do that more naturally now, putting other more important things in my life first. I am the sort of person who likes to get things done straight away – I hate a last minute rush, it makes me horrifically anxious. However, I have come to terms with the fact I will have to do that sometimes in teaching. It’s finding the balance. At the moment, I have found that switching off by 9pm (with the exception of pub quiz night), including both school work and things I do for personal pleasure, I have been able to have a more manageable and enjoyable life. I have been dedicating my post 9pm time to reading and (obviously) sleeping and it has helped me to become more rested and therefore alert in the day! I am aware that this may not be the case forever, but I will be sticking to that in September and hoping to see the same results!
P2,3&4 are now a blur. I am just as strongly attached to that school as I am to my first placement school, where I have had a similar experience with building up fantastic relationships with teachers and students alike. I have throughout enjoyed working with sixth form – being able to chat to them about university and getting a feel for what they are interested in (plus the gossip in my sixth form tutor group was always entertaining!). However, the thing I will miss the most is the personal challenge for me. Being 2 and a half years out of university, where I made a point to only read for pleasure until the PGCE, I had become rusty on terminology and theories. Being reminded of them brought back my love for analysis in both language and literature and I would always leave the lessons having learned something from the students as well as teaching them too. It is a shame that I won’t be teaching sixth form at my next school, but it is something I know I will do again in the future.
I am not going to go into too much detail about the rest of my classes – they have been frequently mentioned for the past 6 months! Instead, I am going to focus on what I have done that I am particularly proud of in these lessons, before moving on to what I plan to improve in my NQT year.
Having a focus on positivity has to be my greatest achievement over this placement school. Not only was my rapport with each class extremely high, but they (and I!) have really enjoyed my lessons. The pink for perfect starters, Haribo quizzes, exit tickets, differentiated group work, having students for teachers, differentiated DIRT and student-led discussions have been amongst my favourite things I have done in my classes. I have had students telling me that I have helped boost their confidence, seen students make outstanding progress and have successfully created a classroom with mutual respect and high expectations. I am going to miss each and every one of my students and the craziness that every day brought to me!
Thinking forward then to my NQT year, I am going to aim to build up fantastic relationships with all of my classes once again, with the emphasis on positivity. Following my most recent assignment, I will also be ensuring to have an inclusive teaching practice, centred around the students in my classroom, but also reminding them of the bigger picture. I feel like I will need to be a little stricter in the beginning, which will be easier to do with a rigid RtL system in place, to maintain the high standards in my classroom. I am also going to try and make a head start on the texts I will be teaching that I am not sure about, in order to be able to go into the classroom with upmost confidence.
I am unbelievably excited and nervous for the next year. Being able to have a whole set of classes that are mine is a daunting but thrilling prospect and I am glad to have had the opportunity to do this in a school I already love. I have got my induction day next Tuesday, and I expect I will do a little blog about that (if I feel like it) but, for now, it’s goodbye to the PGCE and the safety blanket and time to enjoy myself for the next couple of months before getting my head back into the game.
Thank you to all of you who have been reading my posts and telling me how much you enjoy reading them. I appreciate that I can go on a bit of a tangent some (most) of the time, but it has really boosted my confidence knowing that there are people out there who have been following my journey. I still can’t quite get my head around the fact that I am going to be a qualified teacher very shortly. It’s been an incredible year and I feel very lucky to have been at two amazing schools and to have had the support of two amazing lecturers!
Much Ado About Teaching 