Reflection on Teacher Training

18th January 2023realsmart admin

reading time 2m 48s

“Teaching is easy”

Or at least that’s how all of the ‘veterans’ in my Maths department made it look.
But it wasn’t always been like that for them, they too have walked in my shoes, fought similar battles with tricky students that I have, developed a catalogue of resources, learned the tricks of the trade and been through the trials and errors, to find what really does and doesn’t work.
‘Teaching is easy’, but only once you have overcome those challenges, sought the help of peers to develop those resources, had those tough conversations with peers and students alike and come out the other side a hardened veteran that doesn’t struggle day by day but instead has total control.

I can’t stress enough the dire importance of planning and organisation, and honing that ability to find the 25th and 26th hours in the day to get all those extra little tasks done. This term hasn’t been perfect and I look at colleagues and I’m in sheer awe at the brilliance that they exude. At first it was disheartening when I was struggling to find resources for a starter, or planning that first lesson. I was spending an extortionate number of hours to get any sort of progress. But now I can appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that some of these professionals have put into their work to make it look as easy as it does.

“I have made progress!”

Looking back at my first term, I have made progress. I’ve gone from dreading being in front of a class for the first time; a nervous wreck barely held together by sheer fear and adrenaline to ‘owning it’. I live for being in front of that class and showing the pupils just how interesting Maths can be and most importantly, I’m enjoying being there, teaching. I’ve created relationships with students, I’ve built rapport that has allowed me take those risks in the classroom.

The support my mentors have shown me and the path they’ve outlined for me, in terms of what I need to do to be the best version of Mr Walker has been unbelievable. At times it hasn’t been easy, these have been difficult conversations to have, but they’ve always been constructive and completely valid points have been raised. It’s up to me to use that guidance and strive for brilliance. I need those conversations. I need those developing moments. I need that feedback, idea rejection, and praise for thinking outside of the box. I need to work more within a team.

Coming into this year, I thought teaching was about being in front of a class and helping them to understand a facet of Maths or Physics or French, but no. Teaching is much more than that, it’s a team sport, it’s working with colleagues collaboratively, regardless of who is teaching that class, to ensure students get the very most out of every second in and out of a classroom.

“Excited for the future…”

I’m excited for the future, to see the teacher I can blossom into, but I know the onus is on me to make that happen and to strive for my own greatness and reaching my potential in the same way I hope the students I teach, aspire for the same.

Mr J Walker
Trainee Maths Teacher, 2020 entry

To my younger self…

19th November 2020realsmart admin
reading time: 3m 9s

I’ve looked back and seen ‘school life’ through your eyes, and it shocks me what I see.
What alarms me is your tunnel vision on the conversation you were having or the friend you were turning around to. I look through your eyes and realise each lesson was a blur to you. The teacher was no more than a distant siren that went off in the background. If you turned around or were talking too much it would go off, then once it finished you could carry on, just being mildly aware that the siren was ‘recharging’ and would go off again if you didn’t write a few words down or take a breath between conversations.

When you go to school and you turn around and you talk and you throw things around the room, please spend a second to think about how it affected the teacher or the pupils in your class. Believe it or not, they do not enjoy telling you off. You seem so sure that they do. Their minds are racing wondering what else they can do to help you focus, and what they are doing so wrong with you that you aren’t, was it something in their lesson plan, are the activities and tasks they so carefully selected for you, are they not working? Aren’t they good enough? Why don’t you see the effort that went into them?

Another thing I’d like you to think about is lesson plans. You won’t have given it an ounce of thought (you must assume lessons just magically appear out of nowhere) but teachers actually plan their lessons with you themselves in their free time. Yes. They are the ones that decide what you’re doing, they’re the ones that choose the worksheets and the powerpoints and all the activities.

On the topic of lesson plans, I beg you to read up on what SEND stands for.
Teachers spend their time tailoring their lessons to suit needs in your class you don’t even know exist; SLD, MLD, ADHD, ASD, ODD – you don’t even know what any of this means, but these are the things on the minds of teachers everyday. They make it look effortless, but you’d have much more respect for them all if you knew the million things they balance in their head every day, in every lesson.

On Fridays when you go home and completely forget about that lesson where you got sent out, you’d be so surprised to know that the teacher most likely hasn’t. You will finish that week or possible even finish that day or lesson and NEVER think about it again, but they will. They might sit all evening speaking to the husbands and wives you don’t really consider they have, about the awful class they had or the awful pupil. They will sigh and question “Is it me?” “What am I doing wrong?” “Why can’t I do my job?” or “Am I a rubbish teacher?”. It makes me so sad now to think that some teacher somewhere may have spent their whole evening or weekend dwelling on the events of that lesson, when I hadn’t even given it a second thought, or even considered at all that they have. The extent of the emotions of a teacher are some that you, my younger self, cannot comprehend and me also, as a trainee teacher, have not experienced in full either yet.

So my message to my younger self is to think twice next time you want to turn around or talk over the lesson someone has spent their weekend planning instead of spending time with their children or family “boring”.
I know if you had known all of this at the time, you would not have been the student you were.

Best wishes,
Your future (teacher!!) self!

Miss O Home
Trainee Maths Teacher, 2020 entry

Treading the boards with young people

20th June 2019realsmart admin

reading time: 4m 9s

Kerri Boyle is a Graduate Support Assistant at Studley High School. She starts her teacher training in September 2019 and shared with us, an overview of her life as a choreographer working with 5-16 year old students, in musical theatre:

Before I worked at Studley High School I was already involved in working with children in the Performing Arts. In my spare time I choreograph for Lollipop Youth Theatre, a youth musical theatre group in Worcester. Lollipop is a youth musical theatre society with a difference; we do not audition children to be in the company and accept children of all abilities. We have a range of children with special needs such as tourettes, ASD, Aspergers and others.

I work with children between the ages of 5-16 which can provide many challenges in itself. I have worked with Lollipop for over a year now and am currently working on my third show with them.

A standard rehearsal tends to go like this:

  • Get the children to be quiet, take a register, explain what we’re doing, get them warmed up physically and vocally.
  • If it’s a dance rehearsal, I will get them to recap what we’ve already done.
  • We will then walk through the dance and carry on learning a new section, break times, rehearse and repeat, record, go home.

This, however, doesn’t include all the extra work I will have to put in before we even get to rehearsal. I need to turn up with a dance already choreographed, set places for the children to stand in and a method of getting into and out of the dance. I need to acquire the music from our MD (which can sometimes be a challenge in itself!)

 

I’m not going to pretend that it’s all sunshine and roses because it is hard work. We have over 50 children in our company so we are presented with many different challenges during each rehearsal. Getting the children to be quiet to begin with, can be a challenge in itself as there are so many of them and they have so much energy but equally it is one of the things I love about teaching in such an informal setting. They make me laugh so much, each rehearsal with the bloopers and the things they can do or say. I’ve had to ban ‘flossing’, ‘dabbing’ and other dances from well known video games! I have to break down the dances during rehearsal and even have to change or re-choreograph something on the spot if the children can’t pick it up or it is too fast for them.

The real challenge comes with finding a balance in the choreography so that everyone can take part. I need to create dances that are not too fast or too difficult for our younger members and are not too slow or boring for our older more capable dancers. We have to deal with pastoral and safeguarding issues week in week out too, not to mention our children’s many needs.

 

Our current show, ‘Wizard of Oz’ in particular, has been a real challenge because on top of all of the things I have to do as a choreographer, not to mention the things I do as a production team member too, I have had to learn new styles of dance as the licensing requires the ‘Jitterbug’ dance to have styles of Jazz, Charleston, Jive, Jitterbug and others in it’s choreography!

 

There are times when I wonder why I do it, when I have to get out of bed at 7:30am on a Saturday morning after a full week of work or when I’m spending everyday after work in a theatre for technical rehearsals and dress rehearsals.

But, these children genuinely bring a light to my life. When you see that lightbulb moment, when they finally have cracked a dance. When you see what some of them go through on a daily basis; the challenges they have to overcome and how they change when they are on stage. When you see the unbreakable bonds they have made with other children. When you see a 16 year old comforting a scared 5 year old or showing them where they need to be – that’s why I give up my time, my patience and my sanity because at the end of the day, these are the children who will become our future actors, singers, dancers, technicians, teachers, lecturers. They are the reason I am now pursuing a career as a teacher of Drama because I want to be the one who encourages that enthusiasm, I want to be the one who tells them “you can 100% do this”, I want to be the one who believes in them and helps them succeed.

Drama is so much more than being able to perform, than having a talent for acting. It’s about teamwork, creativity, resilience, spontaneity, flexibility, passion, enthusiasm, commitment, dedication and so much more. These are the skills that inform our characters. They teach our children “it’s okay to fail, it’s okay to get up and try again”.

The road to teaching..

25th June 2018realsmart admin
reading time 3 minutes 30s

I absolutely hated school…

One of the wonderful things about the teaching profession, is that there are so many different ways to approach it and to work in it, and there are so many interesting stories of how different people with different backgrounds and experiences came to be educators. For me, it has been a slow and slightly winding road to realising that I want to be a teacher and to deciding that I wanted to apply.

As a student at secondary school in the south west of England, I absolutely hated school and almost everything about it. It was difficult for me to answer the question in my School Direct interviews about ‘a teacher who inspired me when I was young‘, because I honestly can’t think of one. While I had teachers who were kind and supportive and whom I liked, I didn’t come into contact with many who seemed to have a genuine love of their subject.

I always felt at home and more relaxed in Art, more challenged and excited in Science, but the English classrooms were never “home” to me. I always had at least one book in my bag that I was reading for pleasure and could be regularly found annoying the librarian by requesting more books. The only inspiring English teacher that I’ve ever had was my mum.

My mum very clearly loved her job, teaching secondary English at several comprehensives around Weston-super-Mare, she was always very open about how difficult teaching is and how much she gave to her profession. She would give me reading lists and push my reading further and when she saw that I loved Jane Eyre when I was 13 she made sure to give me Wide Sargasso Sea so that I could see both sides of the story.

When my GCSE English teacher didn’t read Romeo and Juliet with us, my mum gave me a copy and showed me the Zeffirelli film to compare with the Luhrmann version.
Thanks to her, I read English Literature at University, but I wanted to experience a world outside education and so after my Master’s degree in Art History, I chose to work in museums and art galleries.

Ostensibly always searching for curating jobs, the experiences I most enjoyed were those involved in art education. I loved to ask children their opinions and ideas of art works and to hear their unique responses and viewpoints, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, but always given without the sense of self-consciousness that somehow develops in adults when they are asked their opinion on art.

I loved to talk to adults about this and to try to give them the opportunity talk more openly about their ideas and understanding. When it came to art – it’s always been my belief that this is where real discussion and dialogue comes from. While this aspect of my job was wonderful, I found it harder to accept the more corporate side and wanting to travel, I decided that teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) abroad would be a good combination.

I never expected for this to be the next adventure in my life..

My time teaching English in Japan was an incredibly eye-opening and rewarding experience; sometimes it was amazing, sometimes it was difficult, but I loved that I was constantly learning. I knew that I would love traveling and that I would learn a lot from it, but I was shocked to discover that what I loved the most was teaching and the people that I learned the most from, were my students. I can talk for a very, very long time about how wonderful my students were and how privileged I felt to have been able to be a small part of their lives for 3 years. I can honestly say that they were amazing people and just being around them gave me such great hope for the future.

I never expected for this to be the next adventure in my life. I am so excited to start my ITT in September and to get back in the classroom. I now know that it’s the one place I want to be.

Sophie Midgley, trainee teacher, English

Twelve Steps to Get Into Teaching

7th June 2018realsmart admin
reading time 9 minutes

I’m going to be blunt here.

Getting into teaching really is a rollercoaster of emotions. As cliché as it sounds, you will experience some serious highs and lows. Application comes with rejection, but it also comes with opportunity and a beautifully decorated stain-glass window to your future career.

So, let’s dive into the initial steps taken, to become teachers of the next generation


  1. Decide that teaching is the right career for you

I’m going to be blunt here. If you’re questioning it, like really questioning whether this is the career for you, then either you’re not quite ready or maybe it’s not for you. I questioned it when I applied for my Undergraduate degree, despite which, I applied for Primary Teaching and as fate would have it, I didn’t get accepted. Instead, I was offered a place on the Special Needs and Education course (I’ll come back to this in a second as I know it may induce a raised eyebrow or two).

Even at the beginning of this academic year, I questioned whether this year was the right time for me to apply. But, after realising that my excuses were only covering up my fear of failure, I stopped putting off the inevitable and started the journey to my dream job.

The final thing that was hindering me, was my undergrad… I knew English was going to be the subject for me and originally, I thought the only way to teach this, was to do another degree, in English. Despite folklore, this is not the case (hurrah!). There are other options. For most subjects, you can complete a Subject Knowledge Enhancement course, or, if your training provider decides, you could be given subject based tasks to complete before you start to build on your subject knowledge.

Whatever is decided, if you want this career enough, if this is your dream career, there is nothing to stop you from achieving it.

  1. Sign up to EVERYTHING

There is so much online guidance and support. The two main sources that I used were the Department for Education’s Get into Teaching site and UCAS’ Train to Teach pages. (Shires TSA’s website also has a section specifically for Teacher Training!).

Get into Teaching provides you with a lot of support in a very helpful layout and if you register, which I recommend you do, you are likely to be provided with a DfE adviser. If you do get assigned someone, do use them! 

Train to Teach has information about how to apply, your eligibility and explanations about the different routes into teaching. Which leads us nicely to


  1. Discover and understand the different routes into teaching

At the beginning, I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by all the different routes into teaching. There are so many! But don’t stress. Research and read about them all. Completing step 4 is also going to help you understand the various routes, so that by the time you apply, you’ll know which is which.

  1. Attend events

The more the merrier (and the easier you’ll find providers who are suited to your needs and requirements). There are university events, focused mainly on the ‘core’ ITT route. I went to Leicester University for my first event, purely because it was close to me and I was way too excited to sit and wait until a Train to Teach event near me.

I found Train to Teach events the most useful to go to. Shires TSA was at Coventry Train to Teach – so, naturally, I cannot recommend going enough.

There is a presentation, which will explain the different routes into teaching, as well as the way the bursaries and scholarships work (ears pricking up now?).

Take your personal statement with you, even if it’s a very rough first draft – bullet point ideas if you have nothing. There are advisers who can give you support with the writing and ensure you highlight your best self without the waffle.

Finally, there are plenty of providers from the area with representatives who you can have a chat with. The only advice I have for this is to try and make a good impression. Be aware that what you wear reflects how seriously you expect to be taken. The providers are trying to impress you and make you want to train with them but you should reciprocate – they might just remember you when you turn up to an interview…!

  1. Register with UCAS

ARGH! It’s becoming real. Don’t worry. There are more videos on UCAS giving you step-by-step guidance on the application process. Your personal statement is the one thing that UCAS can’t help you with – but you have had support from a DfE advisor and you can definitely ask friends and family to have a read through; they are your biggest fans and will support you.

Have a think about the kind of impression you want to make. Professionalism is key, and buzzwords are great, but remember to make it personal.

  1. Apply!

It’s time for the difficult (or perhaps very easy?) decision. There is no right or wrong choice. It’s entirely up to you who you want to apply with. You have three choices and, honestly, just go with your gut.

Think: when you saw the providers at events, which one did you imagine yourself training at? You will have spoken to their representatives, who may have been teachers or members of senior staff at the schools – who can you imagine yourself working with? Who would you be most excited to work with?

  1. Choose your referees

For some people this part is hard. And that’s okay. One is academic and the other professional. Choose two people you trust and who are reliable and honest.

The most frustrating part about applying is when one of your referees is taking a lifetime to write their reference for you. You can’t send your application until they have sent their reference and if they make you wait you will be very aware of the clock ticking. My advice is to ask them in plenty of time so that the request isn’t a surprise and ensure they understand their timing is critical.

  1. Gain experience

This is your chance to get in the classroom! Email schools in your area and ask for a week or two of experience. Your old school is fine but, if you can and feel confident enough to, I suggest going to a different school – it will give you a wider perspective and you won’t feel as awkward walking into the staffroom!

A big challenge here, especially if you have a job or a lot of studying to do, is juggling your experience with other commitments. Get into a school one day a week, or even one morning or afternoon a week, and the hours will soon tally up.

In the school, be proactive – question current teachers about their own motivations and aspirations, talk to teaching assistants about their experiences and finally, ask to be placed in a variety of classes. The more you experience in terms of ability and age, the more prepared you will feel when you start your course.

One last point
 if the school cannot place you into your subject for every lesson it’s not the end of the world – you will absolutely still learn from those teachers.

  1. Practice and pass your skills tests

I stressed so much about the skills tests, especially the numeracy one. I hadn’t looked at a Maths equation since my GCSEs (and hadn’t really planned to!), but it’s a necessity and brings you one step closer to putting a big gold star on your career goals page in your journal
 no? just me? Alright then…

I passed my literacy test first time (woo) but decided within the first ten minutes of my numeracy test that I had failed (boo). However, I didn’t give up, and instead treated the remainder of the test as a practice. I relaxed and didn’t take it so seriously. Ironically, I passed (double woo!). My advice therefore, is try to chill out before the tests. Treat your first attempt as a practice round – if you pass, amazing! If not, you can try again, feeling a little more prepared the second time around.

My only other advice for you: practice. Every. Single. Day. There are past papers online that you can use to find your weaknesses. YouTube is also a goldmine when it comes to tactics (especially for the dreaded mental Maths!).

  1. Get an interview!

 You are definitely allowed a little celebratory dance here!

 

  1. Prepare for the interview

This is when your adviser (if you’ve been provided with one) comes in handy – they can help you prepare. If you don’t have one, don’t panic! There’s a lot of other support online for you to use, especially the Times Education Supplement (TES) if your provider has asked for a lesson plan or delivery. And you can use your friends and family to ‘interview’ you and (yep, I really did this) to be your class for you to teach your lesson to.

Every provider is different and will request different activities for you to prepare and complete. Remember that they know that you are not yet qualified as a teacher, so don’t worry if you make a mistake!

Think back to teachers when you were at school and teachers at the school you did experience at
 which qualities made them a good or bad teacher? What did they do in the classroom that was effective or ineffective? How did their pupils respond to them?

Finally, ensure that what you wear to the interview is professional, comfortable and makes you feel confident!

  1. Get accepted

You’ve done it. You can breathe! Anything that they ask for you to do over the summer, it’s a very good idea to do it. It will only help you. Apart from that, for now, relax.

It’s true, there are a huge number of obstacles in your way to becoming a teacher – but persevere. There are times when you might think “is all this going to be worth it?” (and this is just the application stage!). The answer is yes. Absolutely. The excitement of being accepted and the anticipation for starting will eclipse any doubt.

You are going to be a teacher. How good is that?!


by Suzy Watson – trainee teacher, English