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.