Teacher training: Teach First?

[scifisam]

Fucking hell thats loads!

I had 16 hours in my first placement on my PGCE, 21 and a form group in my second placement. Mostly with extremely bare bones schemes of work (literally the aim of the lesson, no materials or any details). Only from the beginning of October though.

 

[maomao]

I had 16 hours in my first placement on my PGCE, 21 and a form group in my second placement. Mostly with extremely bare bones schemes of work (literally the aim of the lesson, no materials or any details). Only from the beginning of October though.

Crikey. I suppose you get used to it more quickly at least. We were scheduled 6-8 for the first placement, increasing to ten after Christmas (which didn't happen cause covid and stuff).

 

[rutabowa]

If you're struggling with the thought of straight edging it, rock up mid-week with a hangover. You won't drink on a school night ever again*

*not true. But it might put you off till half-term at least.

Ha absolutely no way I am ever risking a weekday hangover, that would be breakdown territory

 

[Sweet FA]

...or watch "Another Round" for inspiration.

Or 'Half Nelson'.

 

[Throbbing Angel]

This was on the radio today. It is about the founder of Now Teach and her journey from Journalist to Teacher at 58 years of age. Now Teach is about career changers getting into teaching. This is something MrsA and I have looked at in recent years. We're both in our fifties.

BBC Radio 4 - Could Do Better - Available now

Available episodes of Could Do Better

www.bbc.co.uk

Could do Better
Lucy Kellaway charts her new start as a trainee teacher at the age of 58, moving from the comfortable life of an FT columnist to the realities of teaching in East London.

In 2016, the Financial Times’ management columnist Lucy Kellaway announced she was starting a new career as a teacher. Calling on others of a certain age to join her, she set up the Now Teach organisation to help older professionals become trainees in challenging schools. The scheme received over a thousand applications and selected just under fifty to join, including former corporate lawyers, investment bankers and senior civil servants.

This series follows Lucy and the other trainees over their first year as they encounter the ups and downs of their new life as novice teachers in inner city London.

Episode 1 – Last Day
It’s Lucy’s final day in her old job at the Financial Times. She talks to sceptical colleagues and undergoes that final duty of leaving a workplace - the boss’s speech.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Don't forget to raid any resources to pad content.

It's often to schoolsey for my course but TES is a good place to search up stuff.

 

[extra dry]

I got 17-20 teaching hours online a week, fairly easy reading and vocabulary work and one adult business class in the mix, elementary learners. The biggest issue is keeping the parents happy with the amount and range of work.

 

[Hollis]

This was on the radio today. It is about the founder of Now Teach and her journey from Journalist to Teacher at 58 years of age. Now Teach is about career changers getting into teaching. This is something MrsA and I have looked at in recent years. We're both in our fifties.

BBC Radio 4 - Could Do Better - Available now

Available episodes of Could Do Better

www.bbc.co.uk

Could do Better
Lucy Kellaway charts her new start as a trainee teacher at the age of 58, moving from the comfortable life of an FT columnist to the realities of teaching in East London.

In 2016, the Financial Times’ management columnist Lucy Kellaway announced she was starting a new career as a teacher. Calling on others of a certain age to join her, she set up the Now Teach organisation to help older professionals become trainees in challenging schools. The scheme received over a thousand applications and selected just under fifty to join, including former corporate lawyers, investment bankers and senior civil servants.

This series follows Lucy and the other trainees over their first year as they encounter the ups and downs of their new life as novice teachers in inner city London.

Episode 1 – Last Day
It’s Lucy’s final day in her old job at the Financial Times. She talks to sceptical colleagues and undergoes that final duty of leaving a workplace - the boss’s speech.

I spent a couple years in a school working in a finance support role.. I'm in my 50s and there's no bloody way in a million years I'd ever consider becoming a teacher! Good luck to those who do though.. Though my mate who is early 50s has just gone part-time and reduced his role.. seems alot happier for it.

 

[scifisam]

I got 17-20 teaching hours online a week, fairly easy reading and vocabulary work and one adult business class in the mix, elementary learners. The biggest issue is keeping the parents happy with the amount and range of work.

It's a very, very different level of admin and planning for EFL compared to mainstream teaching. There's at least one hour of admin for every hour of teaching.

 

[philosophical]

I think a person needs to become a teacher first and worry about their subject or content second.

 

[rutabowa]

Certainly living up to your name eh

 

[spanglechick]

I think a person needs to become a teacher first and worry about their subject or content second.

Yessss - but that doesn’t help the students stay on track.

 

[spanglechick]

Sorry you’re finding it a lot, rutabowa - it is a full on kind of job and it takes a while to get past the stress to see the good stuff clearly. This year will be a cunt. Next year, until Xmas might be worse (usually follows that pattern for pgce>nqt folks). BUT from year 2 term 2 onwards, it gets a bit easier with each new term.

Behaviour is overwhelming and oppressive in a way that other teaching problems never are, possibly because it’s hard to get the desired results by copying what others do. But you’ll find your teaching personality, which includes relationships and classroom management - and when you do, it’ll just work most of the time. And you’ll be free to realise your biggest problems are actually workload, the whims of the EdSec, and workload. And when that happens, you’ll be as happy a teacher as you’re ever likely to be.

BTW schemes of work? Lesson plans? You young’uns don’t know you’re born. As an English PGCE / NQT in the mid nineties I was just told which text to do with which year group each term, and left to pull the whole lot out of my arse.

 

[extra dry]

Its a hellish jump for most people, the workload and the expectations. Give it your best but walk away if you find yourself wornout, tired, jaded amd snapping at everyone who near and dear to you.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I think a person needs to become a teacher first and worry about their subject or content second.

I'm a teacher. Not sure if I could lecture on quantum physics. Or French. Or even any outside of ICT and Creative Media.

I could possibly manage a level 1 course in a lot of subjects but I wouldn't be great at it.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Behaviour is overwhelming and oppressive in a way that other teaching problems never are, possibly because it’s hard to get the desired results by copying what others do. But you’ll find your teaching personality, which includes relationships and classroom management - and when you do, it’ll just work most of the time.

Yeah. Fucking hell yeah.

I am terrified of getting a bad class again.

One of my worst years happened because I was hired after enrolment and they used my courses as a dumping ground for people who couldn't get on to other courses.

Had fist fights in the classroom that year. Also students who would just leave because they didn't give a shit about the course.

Which of course is my fault.

Me coming from teaching really nice adult students then some lower achieving but still motivated tends over to what felt like mad max was a real learning experience I can tell you.

I had to adapt my tool set.

Not as much as you might think but it did require a lot or internal changes.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Actually one of the nice things has been working with lots of SEN students.
I had never done it before and actually I really enjoy it.

I have 9 EHCP students this year almost half the class.

 

[philosophical]

Yessss - but that doesn’t help the students stay on track.

Apart from questioning the whole schooling system you have to ask what on track means.
I suppose it means meeting the demands of the examination gateways.
I don’t think you make a plant thrive by only measuring it, and it is no good being a ‘subject’ expert if those in your charge are ignoring you.
Why should students pay any attention to the demands of a stranger adult if they are not motivated to do so? I think you have to entice them in first, then invite them to do whatever second.

 

[philosophical]

I'm a teacher. Not sure if I could lecture on quantum physics. Or French. Or even any outside of ICT and Creative Media.

I could possibly manage a level 1 course in a lot of subjects but I wouldn't be great at it.

Is lecturing the same as teaching?

 

[extra dry]

Is lecturing the same as teaching?

Can worms opened...

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Is lecturing the same as teaching?

Lecturing is a subset of teaching. However I was just using that term as it has often been my job title not because it was job description.

 

[philosophical]

Lecturing is a subset of teaching. However I was just using that term as it has often been my job title not because it was job description.

Understood.
One worry is the notion that schoolkids sit in rows 'facing the front' whilst the 'teacher' tells them things (about their 'subject' of which they are more knowledgeable than the kids) and then answer any questions the kids might have.
I believe this is the idea many (no not all) have about what 'teaching' is. Allied to the idiotic notion that once you do it for a year, you simply repeat what you have done for the next 40+ years.
Now that sounds like lecturing to me, and to make a success of that the audience/kids are gonna want to have to be there like University Students. Schools are very rarely like that, maybe that kind of 'lesson' takes place 5% of the time in schools. The reality is more like the other 95%.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

That model is outdated. We are now aiming to be learning facilitators.

There are numerous models on different methods of delivering student focused learning.

I can't speak for all teachers but frankly that statement is teaching granny to suck eggs. And only using VE with no checks for learning.

I think the more spicy question is the principles of the curriculum rather that the method of delivery.

 

[philosophical]

That model is outdated. We are now aiming to be learning facilitators.

There are numerous models on different methods of delivering student focused learning.

I can't speak for all teachers but frankly that statement is teaching granny to suck eggs. And only using VE with no checks for learning.

I think the more spicy question is the principles of the curriculum rather that the method of delivery.

Agree with that.

 

[scifisam]

Understood.
One worry is the notion that schoolkids sit in rows 'facing the front' whilst the 'teacher' tells them things (about their 'subject' of which they are more knowledgeable than the kids) and then answer any questions the kids might have.
I believe this is the idea many (no not all) have about what 'teaching' is. Allied to the idiotic notion that once you do it for a year, you simply repeat what you have done for the next 40+ years.
Now that sounds like lecturing to me, and to make a success of that the audience/kids are gonna want to have to be there like University Students. Schools are very rarely like that, maybe that kind of 'lesson' takes place 5% of the time in schools. The reality is more like the other 95%.

I have the sneaking suspicion that you don't really know all that much about current educational methods.

 

[Sweet FA]

Understood

I believe this is the idea many (no not all) have about what 'teaching' is. Allied to the idiotic notion that once you do it for a year, you simply repeat what you have done for the next 40+ years.
Now that sounds like lecturing to me, and to make a success of that the audience/kids are gonna want to have to be there like University Students. Schools are very rarely like that, maybe that kind of 'lesson' takes place 5% of the time in schools. The reality is more like the other 95%.

What an absolute load of old bollocks

You understand fuck all.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Understood.
One worry is the notion that schoolkids sit in rows 'facing the front' whilst the 'teacher' tells them things (about their 'subject' of which they are more knowledgeable than the kids) and then answer any questions the kids might have.
I believe this is the idea many (no not all) have about what 'teaching' is. Allied to the idiotic notion that once you do it for a year, you simply repeat what you have done for the next 40+ years.
Now that sounds like lecturing to me, and to make a success of that the audience/kids are gonna want to have to be there like University Students. Schools are very rarely like that, maybe that kind of 'lesson' takes place 5% of the time in schools. The reality is more like the other 95%.

As a teacher I can confirm that this is complete bollocks and for all the wonderful ideas about dialogic, pupil-led, socially-constructed learning floating around, while the end-of-unit test remains king the 'lecture' format will continue to be a large component of education. If anything the direction of travel is towards more lecturing, not less; with 'ready to learn' and other such ideological projects in newspeak drag disguises placing more and more constraints on what kids can do in a classroom.

 

[chilango]

Loud/influential 'small c' conservative voices in education are pushing hard for a move to 'direct instruction' claiming that "cog sci" makes "drill*" an evidence based teaching method.

Regardless of the research base they are motivated by petty authoritarianism and limited relational skills.

*Not the music.They think that should be banned.

 

[rutabowa]

WOOOO that week ended. It took about 3 years.

 

[rutabowa]

Did a couple of nice calls home at the end, so I have forgotten all the horrific bits for now