School led training

Before term starts, I have three trainee days at the school where I will be based and then two INSET days with the rest of the teaching staff there. This post will cover those three training days which are just for the new starters: i.e. trainees on the Schools Direct course.  These include myself, a couple of other primary school trainees, as well as the trainees at the secondary school just down the road. We were all lumped together on the training days, secondary and primary alike, to do things like school orientation activities, starter games for the kids, data discussions and study seminars.

I didn’t mind these training days. They were more in depth and hands on than the training provider days but I guess that was because the group was smaller and it was all people we were going to be fused with throughout the rest of the year. There was a lot of paperwork again though. Jeez, Louise, the paperwork. I thought the training provider paperwork was a lot to take in but my placement school gave me twice as much again on just the first day: school specific lesson plans, term plans, year plans, curriculum overviews, curriculum overviews condensed into key points, long term objectives by year group and rolling learning objectives for the entire year. Clearly, personal organisation is the key. I knew someone who stopped their teaching training year halfway through because they couldn’t keep up with the paperwork. They were excellent at standing up and delivering a lesson to thirty 8 year olds, but they couldn’t get their heads around all the planning and structuring. And we haven’t even touched on the marking yet- you have to mark each English, Maths and Topic book, with appropriate and child targeted comment, before the next lesson, which could be the following day. That’s at least fifty books worth of marking a night. Sometimes, I think (like police work in Hot Fuzz), paperwork is obscuring the actual art and act of teaching. But then, maybe, you need all those objectives and summaries in order to teach effectively. I suppose anyone can stand up and talk to a bunch of kids but all the paperwork and planning ensures that you’re actually up there teaching them something and then they’re actually going away having learnt something. Two quotes from the days that stand in my mind are these, coming from twenty plus year teachers. The first was “I love my job but if I was a graduate now, I’d never train to be a teacher. Never in a million years”. I asked why and the response was linked to the amount of work required of new teachers. Apparently, in the nineties, it was a doddle. The second quote was “teaching is either the best job in the world or the worst job. And if it’s the best, it is really the best. And if it is the worst, it is really the worst”. That was a worrying sound bite because there’s people out there whose jobs are to clean port-a-loos and other such shit shovelling careers. Either the speaker of the sound bite doesn’t have a grasp of the extent of worst jobs in the world or teaching can get really, really bad.

They didn’t hold back on destroying any allusions about teaching, which is probably a good thing. I’m going into this with no elevated expectations about skipping through fields with hordes of rosy cheeked kids meekly following me and doing as I say. We’ve been told to kiss our social lives goodbye, we’ve been told we’ll be working weekends, we’ve been told we’ll be putting in twelve hour days, we’ve been told we’ll be inspected and observed and monitored like someone in intensive care, to the point where the presence of another adult in our lessons will be commonplace and we might as well tailor our teaching to their needs, rather than the kids. I always thought I was quite an attentive listener and a conscious member of any congregation and the only reason I messed about in school was because I didn’t care and I was trying to show off for the cool kids. But I found it really hard to sit and pay attention during the times our senior staff members were telling us all this stuff and I found my mind drifting off and wondering what Obi Wan Kenobi looked like whilst he was having sex, rather than concentrating on how we have to implement our master curriculum summaries of key points for our year group in the first half term.

I got my wish in the afternoon, when we were put into pairs and set a challenge. We had three hours to create two displays in two different classrooms, using only the resources we could find within those classrooms. No computers, no photocopiers, no printers. And the displays had to be interactive, with a learning intention and, obviously, child proof- so now flimsy bits of paper and wayward hangings. The displays we created were also going to be left up and used/ seen/ played with by the kids when they start next week, so we couldn’t even do a half arsed job if we didn’t lay our hands on suitable resources or ideas.  Quite the challenge and, after staring at the times table mat all morning wondering about Star Wars related pornography, a welcome one.

My partner and I set upon the challenge with gusto. We drew posters by hand, stapled up drapes, cut out shapes, coloured in cardboard doors and arranged tables and chairs. I thought it was a very worthwhile exercise because, if, as a teacher, you’re constantly putting up displays throughout the year, you need to be able to make decent ones, with limited resources in a limited amount of time. It was a nice baptism by fire. We left at the end of the day, happy with our work, content that we had done our best with what we had been offered.

Next morning, we had to go around and critique all the other displays by all the other pairs and, what do you know, but they’d all taken their work home with them and embellished and built on their resources and ideas from there, coming in the next day with all these marvellous, amazing, interactive and professional displays. What cheaters! My partner and I were told in no uncertain way that they were simply being good teachers and that if you snooze, you lose. I was outraged. There were we, adhering to the rules of the challenge, abiding by the constraints to test our prowess, and we’d turned out as the losers. I hate it when people give you rules and things and then you find out later that you didn’t have to follow them, that you could have been “creative”, used your “initiative”, “thought outside the box”. No, actually, you gave me rules and I followed them. If you want me to think on my feet and go against the grain, you should have said that. Or is the whole idea of going against the grain that you shouldn’t have to be told? Do you need to be able to break boundaries and blaze a trail to be a good teacher? I don’t think I’m very good at doing that. In fact, I wrote it down on my Weakness Chart, alongside being too pedantic and analytical. I just like making precise plans and sticking to them, being given rules and working within them. I hate that advert on T.V. with Usain Bolt and Balotelli, going on about impatience and disobedience will be praised. Why? That advert makes it seem like you have a weak character if you are compliant and polite and you’re not naughty or defiant. Sometimes, it takes strength of character to just do the right thing, to be able to just follow an instruction. God, I am such a loserrr.

As it was, even though their displays were all nicely printed, with accurate photos and neatly designed diagrams, all our displays were routinely torn apart by the senior members of staff- not literally torn apart but in terms of being critiqued. They just pointed out everything that was wrong with each display and there was something wrong with every display, no matter how much time and how fantastic they looked. I’ve condensed their key points for displays below:

-          Refrain from using typed text where possible- kids need to be able to see handwriting all around their classroom so that their own handwriting improves.

-          Don’t use capitals when handwriting stuff because kids don’t need to be taught how to write in capitals.

-          Make sure all handwriting is joined and uniform, so kids know what correct handwriting looks like.

-          Displays need to be interactive but you have to have in your mind how interactive: i.e. how many kids will it occupy for how long?

-          Displays need to be enticing and inviting, COLOURFUL.   

-          But avoid putting things up just because they look nice and are pretty.

-          Every item on a display needs to have a learning outcome, a reason to be there.

-          Displays need to be moved around and altered a lot so bear that in mind when you’re nailing up bricks.

-          Make use of laminated paper, which can be written on with one week/ lesson’s learning intention and then wiped clean ready for the next week/ lesson.

There’s lots and lots of writing in this post so I’m ending it now, bye.