It feels like years since the PGCE finished, yet I still find it hard to believe that it is all over! Especially as the past few weeks have been filled with preparations for starting as a newly qualified teacher in September – as well as spending a month back in Early Years! I’ve had a lot of people saying how they have been enjoying reading my blogs… so thank you to those people! I decided to do this post to talk about my induction day, the Team English Conference and going back to Early Years, as well as what I am intending to do over the summer to prepare myself for going back into the classroom. (Whether this will happen or not is to be confirmed, as I am exhausted all the time at the moment… I was going to write this at the beginning of the week!)
Induction Day
Sitting down and typing this now, I have come to the realisation that I genuinely can’t remember if I’ve blogged about this already. So I’m just going to write about it regardless! It felt amazing going back to the school knowing I have a job there! There was a lot I already knew, as I had basically had the same talks in P1 as a part of my PGCE training, but there are a few new things that will be starting in September.
Firstly, the school have invested in Class Charts, which genuinely fills me with excitement. They have found, with the RtL behaviour system, that a lot of students have been slipping under the line by only getting one warning – which is never recorded. This software will mean that every behaviour instance is recorded but, and more importantly in my eyes, praise is also recorded – meaning I can continue to teach (hopefully effectively!) with an emphasis on praise. Parents will also be able to see this, as I believe there is an app they have? Again, this will make communication with parents a lot easier as they will already have a better idea of what is happening in the classroom.
There is also a rumour the school is going to put a ban on mobile phones. I have mixed feelings about this. I believe it is important for students to socialise with each other rather than their devices, and my second placement school succeeded in reducing the amount of cyber bullying by having a complete ban on them! However, I do feel like they can be used effectively in the classroom, and I am a big believer in moving with technology as opposed to banning it completely – plus I love a Kahoot!
Unfortunately, I did not get my official timetable for next year, but I was given a document with an idea of what my timetable will look like. I will be having year 7, year 8, a shared year 8, year 10, year 11 and one library lesson a fortnight with a year 9 class. So, to those of you who can remember any of my previous blogs, I will be taking TWO CLASSES WHO WILL BE TAKING GCSE EXAMS!! It is safe to say I am equal parts nervous and excited – mainly nervous about my year 10 class. The thought of taking a group of 14/15 year olds through all of GCSE literature in less than a year is truly daunting – especially as I haven’t taught anything from paper 1 yet. BUT… I am super excited for the challenge and I keep telling myself they wouldn’t give it to me if they didn’t think I would get good results with them! So spare a prayer for my year 10s and 11s…. they’re in for a whirlwind of a year!!
Team English Conference
I was also lucky enough to be invited by my head of English, who was speaking there, to the Team English conference this year. For those of you who don’t know, Team English is a twitter account that was set up in the wake of the reformed GCSEs as a way of grouping together advice for teaching the new curriculum. This has grown and they now have nearly 24K follows… any teachers who don’t follow them give them a follow here -> https://twitter.com/team_english1?lang=en .
Before we even got to Peterborough, I had to choose who to see speak. This proved pretty hard, as we had covered a lot during the PGCE and there were quite a few people who were sold out. I won’t go into detail about everything I saw, (mainly because I left my notebook in Bristol) but I felt like I had to mention this to anyone who is or is becoming an English teacher. The conference was completely inspirational and I have picked up a lot of tips and tricks (plus an included lunch and a complimentary bag filled with goodies… win win)
Early Years
I have been both working back at nursery and babysitting over July and, honestly, when it came to the evening before I was petrified… what if I have forgotten how to work with the smallest of humans! This has been the longest stint away from nursery that I have ever done, so I was aware a lot of the children will have either forgotten me or just simply won’t know me.
Obviously, as usual, I was completely ridiculous to think that – it literally took minutes for me to settle back in (it is impossible to forget how to look after children clearly!) and it was completely amazing to see how excited the children were to have me back!
I imagine that this may well be the last month I will spend working in childcare, so I am just simply enjoying it. It will be heartbreaking to leave again, as it always is! But I am also so completely certain I have made the right choice for me.
Preparation for the NQT year
So this brings me on to what it is I will be doing in preparation for September. I have had hideous waves of imposter syndrome consuming me on an almost daily basis – I am still blown away by the fact I have actually got teenagers to make progress in my lessons. Anyone that knows me knows how annoyingly organised I like to be – contrary to the belief of many of my fellow PGCEers (yes I just coined this and no I don’t care if it’s grammatically correct) my organisation does NOT mean I have it altogether and am living my best like as a teacher 2k19 … actually that couldn’t be further from the truth. I am often a nervous, anxious mess and I have found that making to do lists and actually DOING things on my to do list help me an awful lot. I also appreciate a lot of people work differently to me.
That being said, my to do list for the summer is:
- Read, read and read some more! Mainly texts I will be teaching next year, approaching Shakespeare from a critical point of view is also necessary, but also treating myself to books I want to read as well!
- Have a break… a big break! I have literally finished my PGCE and thrown myself back into full-time work. Yes I am that crazy. So August is going to be my respite, travelling around Eastern Europe with my lovely boyfriend… and I imagine that will be over as quickly as it started, but I am relishing the idea of not even (hopefully) thinking about next year and just living for the moment. (I am such a cliche soz)
- Maybe attempt to do some creative writing… if I feel inspired… oh and try to exercise more regularly too (neither of these have come to anything yet but we’re getting there!)
I have been instructed by my head of department (so it’s totes official) to not bother planning anything other than my introductory/admin lessons, as I don’t know my classes yet. So that will be a job for the last weekend in August!
I am (hopefully) going to reflect on this as an approach to starting my NQT year after both my first week and the end of the year. If this could help out any future NQT then that would be amazing… if not at least I have a great time writing these blogs!
That’s all from me for a bit now… I will be back in September!
J 🙂
Currently Reading
Malorie Blackman – The Stuff of Nightmares
After reading Noughts and Crosses I wanted to explore more fo Blackman’s work. This was completely different to N&C, but I still really enjoyed it! More of a thriller – there is a train crash and the protagonist has to jump into his classmates’ nightmares to avoid death. Some interesting plot and character developments, a fairly easy read that I will hopefully be able to recommend to students in the future!
Iseult Golden and David Horan – Class
A very interesting play about parents’ attitudes to teachers/ school in general, combined with what could happen when a teacher over steps boundaries. I loved it, but feel like (as always with plays) I would love to see it performed!
Cat Clarke – A Kiss in the Dark
A really interesting story about a girl who falls in love with a boy… except the boy is a girl. It’s one of those books that makes you want to strangle the protagonists as they’re so annoyingly naive, but it poses some interesting perceptions on how sexuality is perceived.
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
I have been dying to read this for ages, so that probably contributed to why I didn’t actually enjoy it as much as I hoped. Yes, it has the typical dystopian qualities, I just felt it was just a bit too weird! Saying that, I did enjoy reading it and couldn’t put it down in places… I just probably wouldn’t read it again!
Joanne Limburg – The Autistic Alice
A completely beautiful anthology of poems, separated into 3 main sections – overcoming her beloved brother’s suicide, using Alice and Wonderland as inspiration to write about having autism and then some random poems at the end. This anthology regularly brought me to tears and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it – this doesn’t often happen with me and poetry!!
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Sign of Four
A potential GCSE literature text – will be following this with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in order to decide which one to teach to my year 10s!
William Shakespeare – Twelfth Night
Ken Liu – The Paper Menagerie and other stories
I found it! I read the title story last week and it made me cry. It is about an American boy with a Chinese mother, who didn’t speak much English, and an American father, who didn’t speak much Chinese. It follows the boy as he grows up and rejects his Chinese heritages and how he deals with his mother’s death as an adult. Completely beautiful and something I think everyone should read! I feel like this would work fabulously in a classroom setting too – there is the potential that a lot of students can relate to the feeling of alienation from their personal culture.
Kazuo Ishiguro – Remains of the Day
Still finding it dull, but forcing myself to finish it before September… deadlines tend to help!
Much Ado About Teaching 