Teacher Training Day 3

There are five teacher training days organised by the Schools Direct training provider between June and the end of July. I can only attend the first three because I’m otherwise engaged during the week of training days number four and five. So this’ll be last post about the training days. Onwards:

The focus of training day THREE was twofold: the first was to go over safeguarding, and the second was to focus on the element of whacky-ness in our lessons.

The safeguarding bit took up all morning; we had a safeguarding specialist in to go over with us what the different types of abuse were, signs, symptoms, procedures, titles of key safeguarding staff and so forth. I’d done a bit of safeguarding before in my current role as general wanderer around a primary school and the others in the room had experience in their various roles as teaching assistants, cub scout leaders, nurses and so forth, so I don’t think anyone was hearing any new stuff. I think they needed to ensure they got it covered with us so they were guaranteed everyone was 100% aware and knew what to do in the event of anything happening, which is perfectly acceptable and so I have nothing derogatory to say upon this part of the day. Except that people in the room were salivating for their chance to tell everyone the horror stories they’d had firsthand experience of. Still, it was a sobering lesson. We had to draw pictures of kids and write down what we thought the signs of the different sorts of abuse were and everything can be an indicator of abuse, everything. Poor academic slide, good academic lift, attention seeking, withdrawn behaviour, hating people, liking people. It was a good lesson in the sense that you have to really vigilant to catch this shit and, anything you do spot, no matter how minor, should be recorded in some sort of safeguarding manual. Take note.

So, the second fold of my twofold summary is the whackyness of the lessons. We had a couple of trainers from the last year come to take us through their outstanding lesson plans, both of which were built around the idea of unusual and unique structures. They emphasised the need to take risks as a trainee teacher. Anything that you think is too experimental, too chancy, too open to the kids going mental, you should do. It inspires and encourages the kids towards learning, it draws them to you and helps manage behaviour. Most of all, it enables them to remember the lessons learned more effectively. Happy days.  The trainers were like, take the kids outside, build things in the classroom, use videos, play music, do maths with food, do science with coke (ca cola) and so forth; don’t have the kids in rows copying out of text books, don’t have them reading out of books, mix it up, literally.

Out of the box and irreverent lessons also help build your teacher personality; it’ll help the kids see you as someone fun but clever, assertive but accessible, not like the teachers of yore. That’s what they kept going on about: don’t try and be teachers of the 80’s and 90’s. Move on, they’re dead, sometimes literally. A new age of teaching styles is sweeping the land and it’s based on taking risks in the classrooms. I don’t know what type of teacher I’m going to be; in that training room, there’s people who are obviously going to be the really cool teachers, then there’s ones who are already kooky and will fly with all this whacky lesson stuff, there’s people who can silence you with a cold stare. I don’t know what category I fit into. I suppose I won’t know until I’m in the classroom.

SCHOOLS DIRECT 15

Teacher Training Day 2

Introduction:

I was labouring under a misapprehension the other day when I said there’s one all seeing, all knowing, omnipotent portfolio of work that dogs teachers’ training like black riders on Frodo’s trail at the start of the Fellowship of The Ring. There are actually four. When I heard that, I died a little bit inside because that’s going to take some colour coding, filing, structuring, management, blah, blah, blah, and I haven’t even thought about the kids I’m teaching yet. The trainers eased my mind just as it started to ferment though when they said that the portfolios, technically, are just the icing on the cake of our Initial Teacher Training year. All the evidence needed to prove we adhere to the Teaching Standards should be present in our actual teaching. Well, what do you know, the world does make sense. The examiners just insist on our maintaining of these portfolios for evidence. I think it’s like maths in year 6 SATS; don’t just write the answer, show the working.

Middle:

To emphasise that point, they showed all the Schools Direct trainees a compilation of clips from various films about the art of teaching, which demonstrated good and bad classroom techniques. It made me laugh that Cameron Diaz’s performance in Bad Teacher was listed under the ‘good example’ category, based on the scene where she takes her kids into the gym and throws dodgeballs at them during a question and answer session; apparently it shows awareness of the kinaesthetic learners. Jack Black in School of Rock was also up there. I can’t remember exactly why now because, during the clip, I kept thinking of his teaching in the context of the storyline (if you haven’t seen it, Jack Black is an unemployed, unambitious layabout who impersonates a private school teacher in order to get money). One film that did look good in terms of teaching styles and teacher presence in the classroom, a film which I haven’t seen, was Dead Poet’s Society, starring Robin Williams and a young Ethan Hawke. Robin Williams mixes the lessons up in his usual, irreverent style but that’s ok to enjoy because it’s an award winning film and not something like Flubber.

Other Middle

Other things emphasised in Day Two of the initial initial teacher training was that OFSTED and the Department of Education LOVE phonics at the moment. Boy, do they love phonics right now, and I say that in a really cheesy American accent. If you’re looking at becoming a teacher, or already in training, do lots of background reading on that. I didn’t even know what it was when they mentioned it; I figures it was something to do with telephony but it’s NOT- it’s to do with how young readers spell out sounds and it aids their reading and literacy development. Every class is meant to have a period dedicated to phonics, so, phonic it up. Make sure you get your head around that before coming into the classroom, or you will look like an ignorant loser. They also took us through seating plans and showed examples of how teachers structure their classrooms, taking into account high achievers and strugglers. They reiterated again and again that when we’re having a lesson observed next year, we should provide the observers/ examiners with annotated seating plans of out class, to show we know what we’re talking about.

End

The trainers also spoke highly of some Australian professor called Bill Rogers, who is a teaching expert in behaviour management. He's done loads of clips and interviews on You Tube and this one stood out for me. There's loads of other ones but that clip starts with a straight question and gives a comprehensive answer. Apart from that, the trainers recommended another book called, Inside the Black Box by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (ONE L). It’s really short reading, like a little pamphlet. I can’t remember the moment the trainers recommended it to us, I just wrote the name of it down. I purchased it and read it but didn’t really get why it was suggested; it just said a lot of things that were obvious and was written in about 1990 so it’s OUTDATED. But still, wiser people than me said it was useful and thus, I pass on their message.

Teacher Training Day 1

Deep and contemplative introductory paragraph:

I'm on the Schools Direct course. Introductions over. 

I often think about the expression from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman when reviewing my decision to become a teacher: “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach”. I think I can do everything to an average level of ability, to a satisfactory level of awesomeness but I can’t do anything really, really well. Jack of all trades, master of none. I’ve tried to be a writer, a cook, a zookeeper, a civil servant, a librarian, a diplomat and so now I find myself at teacher. My point about the Man and Superman quote is that I think it short changes people who decide to become teachers. It’s not that they can’t do anything, it’s that they can’t do anything so well that they can make a career out of it. He should have said “those who can make money from a talent, should, those who can’t, teach”. But then again, that’s why George Bernard Shaw made money as a writer and it was the first on my list of failed professions.

A brief character history and a lonesome application tip:

Ok, so, at the age of 25, I wind up as a teacher. Wind up is a bit harsh as well. I made an executive decision to be a teacher and I am really excited and enthusiastic about it and can’t wait for September. I managed to qualify for the Schools Direct Salaried option as well, seeing as I have decades of work experience and am not just fresh out of university like a womb-wet foal falling onto the stable floor from between its mother’s legs. Here’s a tip for everyone applying to be a teacher: approach the schools you want to go to in the May before the autumn when you have to apply. Write a letter to the head teacher, go in, meet the staff, do a few days school experience and then, when you apply in October/ November time, they’re expecting you’re application, they know who you are, your name is familiar to them and you should find yourself floating to the top of the applicant pile like debris from a sinking ship. I wrote to 12 schools in May 2013, stating my intention to apply for training with them in November. About three got back to me, so I recommend writing to 24 if you really want a buffet of schools to choose from. It was a tactic that really worked though, in terms of getting through the application process with ease and security; a head from another school advised me to approach them like this and I thought I was so ahead of the game, so switched on it, applying six months before everyone else, ha ha, in your face, I’m streets ahead. It turns out that all the real, top quality, high class, gold plated teachers-in-waiting do this months before I did; which was probably why only three schools replied. Thus, I reiterate, if a teacher is what you want to be, you should identify the schools you’d tolerate teaching at and have already informally, unofficially, off your own initiative approached them AT LEAST six months before the round of applications opens for the teacher training year you want to go enrol on.

I don’t have any more application related tips as of yet, aside from having actually having experience working/ volunteering/ looking after kids on your CV. Therefore, I shall move the dialogue on to the meat of this entry: THE ITT TRAINING DAYS.

Initial Teacher Training Initial Training Days:

Subheading: Paperwork

As a Schools Direct applicant, I will take four days of my week in my placement school and one day with my training provider, who is the training provider for an entire area that my school lives in. This training provider holds 5 days in the summer term in order to indoctrinate the new recruits, talk em down, grease em up and slide them into September ready for the year ahead. The first training day felt very much like a bureaucratic affair. There was lots of paperwork given out, CDs, handbooks, stress balls, examples lesson observations, suggestions for portfolios of evidence, coasters and printouts from all the emails they’d sent in the weeks leading up to the day. Nothing has been digitised yet (aside from the CD they gave us, which has about four thousand and eight different files full of more paperwork to complete or read through). If anyone with any power is reading this, I think you should digitise this whole process, rather than relying on printouts, ticking boxes and LEVER ARCH FILES, which were cumbersome in the eighties when people thought those big phones were acceptable.

I think being a trainee teacher is all about providing the evidence which demonstrates you can do X, Y and Z from the teaching standards and personal code of conduct policies. But the evidence is usually lots of written reports, lesson observations, assignments, examples of independent study, lesson plans, and all this has to be cross referenced on an index sheet, which strategically goes through X and what it means, Y and what it means and Z and what it means. And bam, before you know it, loads of paperwork. All of it gets filed away in a massive, fuck off portfolio, which will be a record of the entire year of your life and all you have accomplished, and which examiners will need to infer whether you’ll go on to be a successful teacher or whether you’ll crash and burn like an ill-fated intergalactic space flight.

Do it

Subheading: Paperwork 2

So brace yourself for some serious paperwork. Some of the stuff we started on the first training day felt really unnecessary and some of the tasks we were asked to do (audits and goal setting and highlighting targets) felt very strained and tiresome. All the bits of paper will contribute to the overarching, all powerful end of year portfolio though, so they are all necessary to show you KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT; and, of course, progressing. That’s another tip: don’t say you’re the best at everything and don’t need to improve your subject knowledge at all because, great as that sounds in July, the following May, all those other retards who didn’t know how to spell will be able to demonstrate their learning curve and development, whilst you won’t have moved on at all. This will look BAD. If anything, talk yourself down a bit in your targets and critical analysis, so that, by the following May, your portfolio will demonstrate how well you’ve improved.

OCD

I think I’m quite organised and pedantic about detail by nature (someone once told me I swept the floor better than anyone they’d ever met- this was all down to me meticulously going over every inch of floor with two sorts of brushes and then scanning the floor from different angles to see if there was any light reflecting off stray bits of dust; that’s not even an attempt at humour through hyperbole) so I don’t mind the idea of indexes and cross referencing and an all seeing, omnipresent portfolio of evidence; I think I’ll be able to keep it rolling throughout the year. It does annoy me how cluttered the information feels though; like, there’s bits everywhere: this handout, that handout, this CD, this file, this brochure, this leaflet, this pamphlet, all scattered throughout my bag. Sort it out, you know. Digitise. Streamline. Simplify and all the other words from Office 2010 synonyms bank. In lieu of that, I’m going to have to do some serious bureaucratic ordering myself. I’m talking colour coding, filing, alphabetising, numbering, labelling, collating, reading, in order to get my head around it, ensure I know what it all means and guarantee I haven’t missed anything. I guess that’s a tip too.

Red flag #1:

I found out on that training day I’d be getting Year 6. I did want KS2 so this is cool for me. I’m a tad worried about behaviour management though. I’ve worked at a primary school before and all the Year 6’s thought I was cool, so behaviour management was easy. This is a totally different school, in a totally different part of the country, with a totally different pack of kids and I doubt they’re going to be hoodwinked into thinking I’m cool. I hope in all this training and with all this information and knowledge, I get taught how to gain the respect of 20 eleven year olds who are probably going to think I’m a loser. The trainers recommended we read a book called Gettingthe Buggers to Behave by Sue Cowley if we’re concerned about behaviour management and I think I will get that. It’s got 4/5 stars on Amazon, from 58 reviews, so it’s not a heap of shit and probably worth reading.

Red flag #2:

Also, because of the curriculum change, they’ve had to bring modern languages in as a mandatory lesson. I discovered that on Day 1 of my teaching career, I’ll be leading these Year 6’s in their first ever Spanish lesson. I hope I get taught Spanish as well between now and September because I don’t know jack. I do know one phrase in Espanol, actually, and I’ll end with it here, though I probably won’t start with it in eight weeks time: Cual es la fruta favorita de Beethoven?

Answers on a back of a postcard, please.