Week 1 Round-up - "I'm as excited as I am petrified"

Whenever someone asks me how I felt about going into teaching, this quickly became my default response. I have always enjoyed the aspect of teaching, and have been ‘teaching’ for several years in a multitude of ways.

But this was something totally different.

I remember looking at teachers when I was young almost as a different breed; there were us – kids, parents, families – and then there were teachers - beacons of knowledge and maintainers of tricky situations, who were as varied in their own styles of speech as they were in levels of strictness. I really enjoyed my time at school and I always enjoyed helping others, so teaching was really a natural vocation for me. So why am I nervous?

I woke up on Thursday morning, not feeling the freshest, thanks to a dreadful sleep and having to get up much earlier than I’m used to. Despite this (and getting completely lost on the drive) I was able to make it to the Academy with time to spare.  Walking over to the training room, I walked through a group of 30 students all eagerly waiting outside the main entrance to pick up their GCSE exam results. Even though this would have been me nine years ago, it felt very familiar and I could still remember the fear and elation when I received my GCSE results. It also verified my first reason for the nerves – soon, I will be responsible for the learning, outcomes and well being of pupils. I’ve taught adults for ages, but never kids. Whereas adult learning indeed has consequences, the formation, teaching and development of pupils seems almost polar opposite. A lot of weight is put onto GCSEs and A-levels, both governmentally and socially; my role is to make sure that the pupils do their best to get the best results they can, and therefore be seen in this positive light both by those who surround them and the institutions that will be observing their successes.

That’s scary. Achievable, but scary.

The ITE cohort for this year numbers around 24 people. We’ve all got our stories, our experiences and our shared desire to want to be outstanding teachers. Our tutor has obviously been teaching for a while; this is evident from his tips, tricks, and occasionally unusual tangents from his own experiences in schools (e.g. getting the pupils to understand why you are teaching a particular aspect of a subject, ideas on lesson structure and differentiation, areas for professional improvement, explanations of the seemingly endless amounts of acronyms in the profession…). Even though it’s only been a few days, I can already tell that I’m going to learn lots, not only from the course structure, but also from others’ experiences, historically and presently, and my own mistakes.

As optimistic as this sounds, it too carries another reasons for my nervousness. The coming year will bring a workload that seems like a mountain right now. You know; one of those mountains where if you keep looking up you feel like you're going to fall backwards and still not see the peak?! 

After speaking to NQTs and others in the profession, this year will be memorable, hopefully for the developmental reasons and not where I’m drowning under a sea of assessment criteria and lesson plans. Nevertheless, I feel like I’m going to have to rely on quite a few people to keep me afloat at certain times. Will I have enough time to complete my lesson plans effectively? How many extra-curricular activities are enough to gain QTS? Will I realistically be able to learn to become an outstanding teacher, whilst studying for a PGCE, on top of keeping up to date with my French and (rapidly) building up my knowledge of Spanish, and maintain enough time to have a social life?! Time to start getting better at time management!

I hope that the group all come around to supporting each other through more challenging times, too. As I mentioned before, we're all individual but we have a common goal in mind. It's always a little awkward when you're thrown into a situation with people who you don't know (and there's going to be a lot of that very soon!) but we seem to be getting on well. I hope that any initial tension will soon dissipate, and we'll be able to connect on professional and personal levels very soon... including individual quirkiness!

Overall, right now I am optimistic for my future, that of my future colleagues and of those of the pupils whose lives we’ll be playing a part in. 

The journey has definitely started! 

(We're gonna need more coffee...)

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My three biggest achievements for this first “week” are:

·      Being able to manipulate my daily routine to get up early, prepare things for the day and beat the traffic

·      Getting to know the names of people in the group quicker than I expected (about 50% in two days is very good for me!)

·      Being able to relate initial academic readings to concepts that Chris has spoken of, such as differentiation by outcome and formative assessment/assessment for learning

The three things I need to work on are:

·      Improving my confidence around others and ‘involving myself’ more

·      Learning to take things in baby steps, rather than viewing the entire year as one big impossibility

·      Taking notes and asking questions