Archive for PGCE

10 Reasons not to be a teacher

May 4, 2008 at 10:52 pm · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

So, I’m in my last PGCE placement trying, and failing, to get a job as a teacher. As I have a family to support, not working is not an option (and don’t you just hate that). So, staring bleak reality in the face, here are my top 10 reasons to not be a teacher, at least not immediately.

 

1. Lots of the teachers that I meet (I would say all of them but it would be more accurate to say all of them that I can remember) consider me nuts to consider being a teacher when I can earn considerably more doing what I was doing in the city. And if the hours that I’m putting in on this teaching practice are in any way indicative of what will be needed as an actual teacher then the hours aren’t that different.

 

2. I can earn a lot more in the city for the same kind of hours.

 

3. The way of getting a job as a teacher is fundamentally screwed. You go for the interview and have to say almost immediately if you want it. Of course, for me, this is just hearsay as I’ve not actually been offered a job yet, but, if you need to work, there is huge pressure to take the first job you get offered irrespective of how crap it is. It seems to be that the system is designed to ensure you end up in an entirely inappropriate job.

 

4. The teachers that I’m in class with are actually pretty glad to have another adult around to talk to. I’m struggling to think of a good reason why that wouldn’t happen to me.

 

5. All teachers are not the angels I had then down as, though most of the nicest people I’ve met are teachers. There are some out there that are bitter, some that are twisted by thwarted ambition, and some that genuinely dislike the job, or even children. And these are the people that you may need to work with.

 

6. Schools have hierarchies, and politics. Do not become a teacher because you are sick of the office politics, its right there in schools as well, though not to the extent that you’ll in the city.

 

7. I can’t count to 10!

 

However, no matter what I write here, I do really want to be a teacher. And I’ve invested in it, 9 months of my life, and I’ve got the student loan to prove it. But it is all a bit academic if I can’t get a job. With a family, if you haven’t got that, or the guarantee of one, the only reasonable thing is to look elsewhere as well. So I’m going to do that as well, and hopefully that will mean that I can look for a teaching job at my leisure and not feel forced in taking the first one that comes along.

 

And that’s more than a bit of shame, and it’s a real waste for the country. What’s the point in training teachers if they don’t feel they can wait to get a job at the end of if it? But, truth is, I thought that I’d be gutted by having to wait for a bit, and I’m not. I am actually looking forward to working with adults again, and seeing if life in the city looks any different after 9 months doing teacher training.

 

But if I never actually teach, that would depress me. As much as I may fight it, once the snake has it in your coils there is no guarantee of escape.

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Back to School

April 16, 2008 at 10:07 pm · Filed under Blog, Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

As if to confirm every stereotype everyone ever held about Indians, my Dad (the Indian half of my parentage) used to have a small paper shop. Not for long, it wasn’t particularly successful, but it was his own, and my dad had always wanted to own his own business.

 

Round about this time of year he would get a cardboard display container out with little bags of cheap stationary in them, rulers, pencils, you know the sort of thing. And he would put an advert in the local rag “Back to School”, with the name of his shop. Sounds reasonable, until you opened the paper, and there were adverts in there from the really big shops, Woolworths (well, they were really big then) etc, with their “Back to School” deals on clothes and even cheaper (in every sense of the word) sets of stationary.

 

The size of the adverts seemed to be in direct proportion to the size of the business, so these big chain stores would have adverts that were either the whole page, or at least dominated it, and my dads advert was a tiny little advert next to it. You had to know it was there and look for it, or you’d never see it. I’ve no idea if it worked, I get the impression that any money spent on this advert was wasted, and we certainly never had money to burn, but I may be wrong, maybe there were people out there who did want to shop in little shops owned and run by one person.

 

And I find myself wandering if I’m doing exactly the same thing as my dad, which is the fate that I guess every man in the world is either trying to emulate or avoid, depending on, well, if you’re a bloke you’ll know what. In my case, it’s very much the latter, but that’s not really important.

 

You see, I have this thing about the use of ICT in teaching in primary school, especially the teaching of English (if we are allowed to call it that) to boys. From my, albeit very limited experience, I’ve found a couple of things. Firstly, a lot children, and in particular boys, are totally turned off from English, and this screws them royally in every subject. Second, ICT just isn’t used very much at all in teaching of different subjects, and I mean really used in teaching it, where the children get to use it on mass, not just the teacher using the interactive whiteboard, or for one or two children using it to play an English game.

 

Now I’m going to be seriously controversial. When I think about it, I guess the reason that ICT isn’t used that widely or well, is that most primary school teachers are female and at least in their thirties, and ICT just wasn’t their bag when they were younger, and still isn’t. As we all know, most primary school teachers are chicks, and women dominate everything to do with teaching in primary schools, apart, apparently, from conferences etc to do with ICT.

 

And this is a shame, ‘cos boys love playing with computers, and if you can tap into this then you can really start to get them involved in learning English. And the best way to use ICT in the teaching of English? Well, for me, and given how you are reading this I guess its no surprise, every child of the age of 6 and above gets their own blog! Now, this is not exactly new or controversial, search for blog in this (its just over 3MB), or check out “The big pICTure”(and this is only instance, there is more research on this than you can shake a pointing device at).

 

So this is my mission, to introduce ICT in general, and blogs in particular, into any primary school that will listen, and I guess the one I work in (hopefully, pretty, pretty please let me work in one) would be a good start. But this comes back to the whole “Back to School” thing. As per my about bit, I am a student teacher, I am the most insignificant little thing on the side of the school. I imagine Douglas Adams would have a good way of describing just how insignificant I am, though I think “mostly harmless” simultaneously overstates my importance and is fundamentally misleading. And, as an NQT, this wont change. And, lets face it, I’m going to have a sackload of bigger things to worry about, like not losing my job in the first 5 minutes, should I be fortunate enough to actually get one.

 

But, like my dad, this insignificant thing is still going to try, and I’m going to start here. If you have children of primary school age, I encourage you to get them to blog, writing about anything. What they have read is a really good, but my daughter writes her own fairy stories, with pictures. She says she likes it because “it looks like you haven’t made any mistakes” – imagine taking away that fear of failure from writing! And get them to play around with the font, the different styles and sizes, my daughter loves it, and boys in school go ape. And get relatives and friends from across the country, and indeed the world, to read it and leave encouraging comments on it. My daughter’s blog has become an extended family activity. And if you do this, please let me know, I’d love to hear.

 

One day I may share what happened to my dad’s shop, but not today, it may put you off.

 

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Old wives tales

March 24, 2008 at 3:49 pm · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, Old wives tales, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

I have it from the highest authority that I am destined to be the perfect teacher and that every school in England, nay the world, should be crawling on their knees to my door begging me to work in their school. That authority is my mum, and are you calling her a liar?

To be fair, she is getting on a bit, and is prone to old wives tales, but let me tell you, some of those old wives are pretty sharp. I count my mum amongst them, and on this point at least, I whole-heartedly agree with her. In terms of academic qualification, I reckon I’m comfortably in the top half of trainee teachers. Without being disrespectful, it appears to me that it’s not too tough to get a degree nowadays, I’m not saying you just have to turn up, but when I see some of the folks on the course struggle with the primary level maths it does make me wander. I do realise that maths isn’t everyone’s bag, but really.

And then there is my work experience. I’ve been working in IT for 20 years, and I’m pretty comfortable around it (or should that be IT?). There is quite a lot of research out there that says using IT in a not too half-brained way can have a significant effect on learning. Of course, there is also a lot of stuff around to say that it doesn’t make much difference at all, but I’m going with the first lot, so my experience should really count for something. Not that I haven’t got a lot to learn about its use in primary schools, but judging by some of the questions teachers ask me, I’m way ahead of the game on this point.

And then there are my physical characteristics, I’m a bloke who is not entirely white. I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere in the country, but around my neck of South-West London, as a primary school teacher that would definitely mark me out as an endangered species.

On top of this, I would like to think that I can actually teach, and my first block experience would indicate this.

So, job done. I shouldn’t even have to apply for jobs, logically they should come looking for me. And if I really do have to go through that whole interview thing, then, hell, I’ll just knock’em dead with good looks, easy going manner, and razor-sharp intellect. But Houston, we have a problem. The couple of jobs I’ve applied for so far I haven’t even got an interview. The first one I got some very good feedback on, it was a points scoring thing and there were a couple of areas I hadn’t covered off, so I didn’t get through. The second one was explicitly looking for someone with great IT skills, but again, I got a thanks but no thanks without even getting to see them face to face.

I don’t know how much of this is denial (denial is not a river in Africa) and how much truth there is in it, but I’d like to think that its not anything intrinsic about me, but there is a game to be played and I’m not fully aware of the rules. When you think about it, the whole recruitment thing for teachers is quite perfunctory (– adjective – performed merely as a routine duty; hasty and superficial), you write a bunch of stuff in an application, if you’re very lucky they get to see you teach an unfamiliar class for 20 minutes, and then a 20 minute interview. In the city, you’d go through at least 6 interviews of up to 2 hours each.

Whatever the reason, I really need to sort this out quickly. I have a family I need to support, and I have to work. If it’s not as a teacher, it needs to be something else, and I’m not in a position to be able to rely on supply teaching. So I have a fear that it may all be for nowt. Unless I can get an application form together that allows me to get in front of an interview panel, and can turn that into an actual job, I may need to go back to the city. And once I‘ve done that, it is far from clear whether I will be able to go back into teaching, I don’t know how schools would react to an NQT not working in teaching, and I don’t know how keen my family would be on taking that cut in income again.

So, I need to get an application form together that get me interviews, and I need to turn that into a job. Failure is not an option.

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Be careful what you wish for

March 9, 2008 at 9:21 pm · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

So far, I have been worrying about relatively small inconsequential things, like finishing the course and finding a job, when what I really should have been worrying about is what happens if (that is a really big if, and, as we all know, size matters) I do manage both of these.

I’ve started going around schools with a view to applying to them. Of course, its all a façade. I don’t particularly want to look around the school, and sure as a sure thing in suresville, the deputy head doesn’t want to spend 2 days of her life showing a bunch of people around her school, the vast majority of which won’t get close to interview. But that’s the game, she has to make a point of showing us around, and we have to make a point of going around and asking intelligent questions (note to self, do ask intelligent questions, or, failing that, ask questions. Standing there surreptitiously staring at the receptionist isn’t going to cut it).

Of course, I’m not the only one, there are a number of other people being shown around at the same time, and is pretty easy to put my finger on what it is that marks me out as different – I’m the only bloke. I’m the only male applicant in a list of applicants to get into a primary school where all the staff are female. When you think about it like that, it’s pretty stark.

Not that I didn’t know this, I’ve know it from the start, this is the life I choose. The TES (that’s Times Educational Supplement for any readers not yet inducted into the educational TLA’s) did paint a rather bleak picture this week. No other males = no talking about footy. Instead, you need to gen up on the calorific value of every food stuff on the planet in order to have any chance of being included on a conversation. Again, I know this, I’ve been on my block practice, I’ve sat in staffrooms where the conversation has all been about THAT dress. I guess I was just in denial, and maybe that’s a country I should re-visit.

But there are some rather delicate questions that I’d like to raise that I’m not sure are acceptable in interviews. I’d like to think that I was pro tearing down taboos and demystifying human bodily functions, but can I really sit in an interview and ask if all the staff have synchronised their periods? As far as I am aware it’s a pretty well established physiological phenomenon, and it is actually quite import. Imagine going to environment where once a month the other 50 people want to rip your head off. Maybe this is the real reason the government is trying to encourage more men into education. As far as I’m aware, and according to the TES, the research is quite inconclusive of this point, there’s no particularly good reason for encouraging more men to be teachers. But if the prospect of this phenomenon scares me, imagine what it is going to do to the children.

Of course, there is upside to working with an all female staff, and the receptionist at the last school I went to definitely falls into that category. Unfortunately, there won’t be anyone I can talk to about this. Except, of course, statistically speaking with that many women some of them are bound to have alternative orientations, maybe they would be open to dialogue on the relative attractiveness of different women.

Only thing is, being a bloke, I’m totally unaware of this sort of thing, so the only way I could identify my own potential talk partner would be to ask at interview, and that’s a question I definitely couldn’t ask.

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Back to school

February 24, 2008 at 11:55 pm · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

Or, more accurately, out of school and back to college.

Something weird has happened, there’s been a sort of change of atmosphere around the whole PGCE thing. I don’t think it’s just me, I pick it up from my fellow aspiring teachers as well. It’s like it’s become a bit of a game.

I’m not sure why this is, but I think a couple of things have contributed to it. Firstly there was the absurd insistence that we do a bunch of work that no one will ever look at. It reminds me of psychology experiments we were taught when I was doing my first degree (yes, I can remember that far back, the Alzheimer’s has totally taken over yet), where people are stuck in rooms and told to do totally meaningless tasks like writing something and then tearing it up and putting it in a bin, and doing this over and over. The idea was to see how long people would do something as pointless as that for, and the answer, surprisingly, was ages. It turned out that the poor people being experimented on thought it was some kind of endurance test, so kept going.

This is possibly the only rationale for college telling us to complete all these forms and assignments that no-one looks at, that we re part of some big experiment. One day we will wake up and realize that we are living the teacher-training equivalent of the Truman show, and the reason that the library isn’t open on the weekend (don’t even get me started on that) is that they need the set for something else.

I think the other reason for this change in atmosphere is that we have now been in schools for a decent period of time, and have found out that what we get taught at college has only a passing resemblance to what actually happens in reality (maybe the Truman show thing is just the college part), and so that going back and doing (I was going to write learning, but thought better of it) a lot more stuff that we almost certainly won’t use just seems stupid.

And there is one more reason. I think most of us reckon that, having got this far, we’re probably going to complete the course one way or another, so the important thing has moved on from how to get to the end of it, to getting a job when you do. What would make this course really pointless would be to end up one of those statistics of qualified teachers who isn’t teaching.

But the effect is that no-one treats anything particularly seriously anymore. When people sit around with their pint of Guiness, if they discuss college at all it’s to see how best to fabricate references for their assignments (this really pisses me off, I was too stupid to think of doing that and actually did the reading for the assignments, if I had my time over I would be taking notes at this point). But what they spend more time doing is discussing what jobs there are, and how best to get them.

But I shouldn’t complain too much about college. At least the scenery’s good.

Better go, the other half has just come and stood next to me with a large packet of washing powder and said something along the lines of “Darling, shouldn’t you be doing the washing, with Persil Extra young Tommies football shirt will come out extra white”. What she talking about? Our progeny are strictly x-chromosome.

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Teaching children Right from Wrong

February 10, 2008 at 11:44 pm · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

You get a few unexpected twists with this teaching lark, including the fact that someone, somewhere thinks that you are someone somehow qualified to teach children right from wrong. This presupposes that you know the difference yourself, and you sort of think you do, but there are always those borderline decisions.

So you fudge it, you come up with scenarios and start a discussion and let the children decide for themselves what is right and wrong. Though I really don’t think it should have taken 20 minutes to conclude the whole robber and old lady with her pension thing.

And here’s another unexpected thing about teaching, it does make you look at yourself, what do I mean by right and wrong, where are the grey areas for me?

For instance, it was suggested that I forgo an evenings pleasure of lesson planning and wind my way up the M6 to Brum for a curry one evening. I know, long way to go for a curry, lets face it, you can lift the phone and get one delivered to your front door in 30 minutes, and even I could probably shift my bony arse from in front of the computer to the front door to pick up a curry. But there were some people I was pretty keen to meet so was seriously considering it.

But here is the moral dilemma. If I was going to go to Brum for a curry (and no, that’s not the start of a joke, but it should be) I’d have to go there and back in one evening, so no beer. A curry without beer, is that just plain wrong?

When you teach RE there does seem to be a natural inclination for children to be a bit flippant. For instance, I’ve heard children suggest that they may become Buddhist for an evening (some strict Buddhist don’t eat after midday – don’t say you never learn anything from this Blog) in order to avoid a meal that they would rather not eat, usually on the basis that it contains something that approximates to a vegetable.

Outwardly you need to stamp on this, what do we mean by religion? It’s about the big questions, why are we here, what happens when we die, how should I live my life, how do I tell right from wrong? So, no, religion is far too important for such petty trifles.

Inwardly, you’re thinking, hmmmm, maybe the next time the misses makes that vegetable stew…

RE is a rich vein for all sorts of things. One of my big fears is that I somehow get under the radar and sneak through the course, but can’t get a job at the end of it. So I’m starting to apply for teaching pools at the moment. There’s lots of guidance on what you need to put in the application form, but a big thing is that you need to evidence it.

So you start trying to tailor your teaching towards being able to evidence whatever it is you need to be able to evidence in order to get into the pool. Again, a little voice in your head starts saying “Shouldn’t you be doing what’s best for the children”, but you stamp on that sharpish.

A hot topic at the moment, is, apparently, making use of outside spaces. So, RE to the rescue. The Buddha sits under a Bodhi tree and meditates until he finds enlightenment (you guys are learning sooooo much today). So, not withstanding the fat that Bodhi trees are a little thin on the ground in SW London, you think, let’s head out into the school grounds for this lesson, sit under a tree, and, well, I don’t know, come up with some sort of lesson plan from there.

So the day comes, its time to teach the lesson, but its cold, and, if not full on raining, then at least a steady drizzle. And you think, I need evidence, shall I send them all out to meditate under the tree in the corner of the field anyway, or do I do the obvious thing and do the lesson inside. And, if I do the later, on my applications form should I say that I did the lesson outside anyway?

Now I’m not going to say what happened in that lesson, but really, which idiot thinks I’m suitable to teach right from wrong?

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Doing a PGCE and cant take it anymore

January 28, 2008 at 12:15 am · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, Just in time, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

That’s not actually how I feel at the moment, but it is something, if you type into a search engine, that will send you careering down the information superhighway to this blog. Strangely, googling “Doing a PGCE and having an absolutely splendid time” doesn’t register at all, so I guess that tells me something about where I’m at.

Last week was a bit of an epiphany. Well, epiphany is a bit strong, but I’ve just finished a draft of my RE assignment (hoorah!) and my brain is steeped in religious sounding words. If your substance is an insult to the readers intelligence, you better have some nice window dressing to wrap it in (to be clear, I’m talking about my RE assignment here, not the blog).

Following my observed lesson early in the week, when an academic expert comes in to watch you teach and tell you exactly how inept you are, one piece of feedback I got was that I should go down the pub. I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone in authority to tell me that. Unfortunately she didn’t write that down. There was a lot of stuff that she did write down, and I’m not sure that it was absolutely essential that she used red biro for doing so, but I’ve chosen not to dwell on that, but concentrate on that pearl of wisdom – “go down the pub”. Epiphany.

Its not clear exactly why she gave that advice. If it was because of the way that I looked, I think she would have said “go to bed”. More likely, she had been observing other students, and had come to the conclusion that something needed to be done to stop the college having a bad completion rate due to suicide.

But good advice is good advice, so I followed it. I went to the pub with my fellow student for a couple of glasses after school. And then went to the pub in the evening, for a few more glasses and a couple of pints of beer.

Unfortunately, my ineptitude in teaching is matched only by ineptitude in drinking (I don’t need an academic to provide this piece of self-knowledge), so not only did I lose that evening in terms of doing my preparation, but the following day as well. I did have one lesson to teach, and either the class was very good, or I was concentrating so hard on physical survival that I didn’t notice, but teaching seemed fine (maybe there is a lesson here). But that meant that there were 2 nights where I wasn’t up until the small hours preparing lessons, and the week seemed to pan out just fine. Epiphany.

And so, this weekend, I haven’t done any lesson preparation. To be fair, for one reason or another I don’t have to teach until later in the week, but still, I’ve made the conscious decision not to spend every waking minute immersed in planning all these lessons, but to see how it works winging it a little bit more – “just in time” rather than “just in case”. Of course, I wont know until later in the week how this pans out for me, but its looking good from where I’m sitting now.

And it does mean that I’ve been able to get a draft together for my RE assignment. I think maybe, just maybe, it will get me a pass. I’m not looking for glory here, a “this guy is really taking the piss but he seems to have met most of the criteria so I guess we should pass him” is absolutely fine by me.

This really should make me feel quite good, but a couple of things are disturbing my happy state of mind. Firstly, I can’t help myself feeling a little guilty about producing work of such appalling quality, and secondly, it did give me the chance to look at what I need to do for my science assignment. This is twice as long as the RE assignment, has a reading list as long as something that is really, really long, and I am told is marked a lot more strictly.

Only one thing to do at a time like this, follow the sage advice of my observer.

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Failure is not an option

January 21, 2008 at 12:23 am · Filed under Blogroll, city life, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

Run over by a truck. That’s how I feel, like I’ve been run over by a truck. Not a car, or a van, or even a lorry, but one of those monster trucks they use for defacing the world in Australia. I’m guessing it doesn’t make that much difference exactly how big the truck is that hits you, but for the split second before impact, you’re feeling of dread and impending doom is going to be that little bit more profound.

It’s the end of my second week of school experience, and I haven’t been to bed anywhere near midnight in that time. Its not just the not getting to bed thing, there is the crying baby to throw into the mix as well. As I type, I can hear her screaming for England, and can feel the pain of the MOMC (Mother of My Children), as she is lying there with her. So even when I do get to bed, I don’t get to experience that mythical state I have heard people talk of – sleep.

So now I feel like a walk on extra in the night of the living dead, and look like it as well. This I know because people keep telling me. To be honest, I don’t find that particularly helpful. Especially from people who look like they have just had 8 hours beauty sleep followed with a 2 hour facial and massage. Can’t they all form some kind of fresh-faced, relaxed and toned club and leave the rest of us zombies alone?

Lots of people told me how hard the course was going to be, and, to my shame, you can track in my blog how disdainful I was of these harbingers of doom. In my previous life in the Eastern Edge of Reason Bank (EERB) I’ve worked stupid hours, for months on end I have been working 14+ hours a day, and had nights when I didn’t get home.

But this is different, its not like, if I need to take 10 minutes out, I can tell the children to go away and think of a solution themselves, and come back in 2 hours and we can discuss it. When you’ve got 30 of them sitting in front of you, bent on undermining your very inventive but as it turns out totally inappropriate maths lesson, disappearing into an office for 10 minutes to make a very important call I’m guessing just doesn’t work. I say I’m guessing, I don’t actually know because I haven’t tried it, but I’ve got a feeling it’s a strategy that I’ll be looking to road-test in the near future.

For anyone who hasn’t done this, which is the 99% of the population of there with a still functioning brain cell, this is due to the need to write lesson plans. Not just any old lesson plan, but lesson plans that meet the colleges sadistic (I would say satanic, but it’s a very Catholic college and that really might upset them) specifications. Personally, I would have thought it would be much better if we used the same template as the teacher we are aligned to (i.e. none at all) but, no. When it takes you an average of 2.5 hours to write one lesson plan, including getting the resources together, differentiation, blah blah blah, and you’re teaching 2 a day, you can see he problem.

Thing is, on our next assignment, we have to teach 4 lessons a day. Houston, we have a problem.

I have taken some steps to try and manage the situation. Firstly, I’ve decided not to go out for the duration of the placement – another 4 weeks. This may sound like some sort of grand gesture but is really quite tokenistic, I haven’t gone out in the last 2 weeks and there is no prospect it of it happening while I’m still at school. But it makes me feel like I’m little more in charge of the situation, small things small minds.

Second, my assignments. There still there and they still need to be done, and I don’t do them I will fail the course. However, the date for these is the end of Feb, so I reckon I can worry about failing for that reason in a few weeks time. I’m going to tackle the failure points in chronological order, and the next official one is me being observed teaching the day after tomorrow.

There is another one, tomorrow morning. Inability to get out of bed and drag my sorry ass to school I’m pretty sure is grounds for failure. So, excuse this rambling post but I have got a 15 month old that needs an ear to scream in to.

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Outsourcing – the modern way

January 6, 2008 at 10:14 pm · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, Outsourcing, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching

I’m a bit of a swat. I don’t think I used to be, in school I always sat at the back of the class, and managed to blag my way through college through looking at friends notes whilst I enjoyed some quality time with my duvet. But, for this course, I have definitely turned into a bit of a Swat. Its born out of fear, which I believe to be one of man’s fundamental drivers (not sure that this is something I should be looking to act on as a teacher), the fear that I have been out of academia for so long that I would no longer be able to do it. And actually its served me quite well, whilst others were burning the midnight oil the week before Christmas, I had handed in my assignments and was free, as demanded by the season, to make merry.

But, I kind of took the making merry thing a bit to heart, and more importantly, took the not having to do anything very much to heart. Not that I haven’t done anything, more that I’ve done very little and certainly am not ahead of everyone else, which is where I was before Christmas.

So now it’s Sunday night. Tomorrow, I start actually teaching for the first time in earnest. It’s not too horrible to start with, 6 lessons in the first week, and gradually increasing, but I can’t help thinking that I really should be nervous. But I’m not. At least not about that, what I am nervous about is the fact that I have a whole bunch of assignments that I should have started on, which I haven’t. And now my life is going to be full of writing lesson plans etc so that I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity to complete my assignments.

Of course, there are mitigating circumstances – total disinterest. The assignment I should be doing (in fact, would preferably have done), is RE. And I don’t know why, but I just can’t engage. I should probably looking at what me preferred learning style is using that to find some way to motivate myself, but I really can’t be arsed. And the strange thing is that one of the first lessons that I have to teach is RE – Buddhism. And I’ve actually spent a reasonable amount of time mapping out the RE lessons for the next 6 weeks and getting what I believe to be a reasonably engaging lesson plan together for the first one, so its not that I’m not interested in teaching it.

In order to understand how fundamental this issue is, there is another exactly analogous situation that is occurring in my life right now – getting my tax return done. If I fail to do either, I’m totally screwed, but I really, really can’t seem to engage.

I have happened on a sneaky way of getting my tax return done, which is manipulate persuade my better half to do it. This has involved my sudden realization that I need to spend quality time with the 14 month old over Christmas in order to bond, and clearly couldn’t do the tax return at the same time – a top tip for any fellow shirkers out there (though I accept no responsibility for the outcome if you do try it, it was on a knife edge a couple of times), but I really don’t think it is reasonable to ask her to do my RE assignment as well.

I have thought about searching the web and lifting an assignment off there – there must be a bunch of them around – but we have been given strict warnings about the dangers of plagiarism.

So my solution is very modern – outsourcing, no-one said anything about that. I’m sure there must be a myriad of companies out in Asia that would write an RE assignment for me, but the stumbling block here is that they would charge. As you are aware, I am an impoverished student with no hope of any significant future income (I’m going to be a teacher). But if there is anyone out there who would be willing to do an RE assignment, your reward will be in heaven.

Hmmmmm. I wonder if I can work an RE assignment around this.

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Happy Christmas

December 21, 2007 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Blogroll, city life, computing, downsizing, dropping out, IT, PGCE, Student Teachers, teacher training, teaching, Uncategorized

It’s very nearly Christmas. I haven’t been in school all week and should have been doing lesson plans and getting a head start on the remaining assignments. And, to give myself some credit, I did start the week in that way. On Monday I went to the college, got some books out on the reading list, and then went home and started writing up lesson plans, and emailed them to my class teacher for review. You really can’t ask for anymore than that.

On Tuesday morning I got a reply from her, basically I have to rewrite them. Bummer. And I had spend a huge amount of time, and even a few quid, getting the resources together for the lessons, which now are of no use as I can’t teach that lesson. Even bigger bummer. If anyone wants a CD of a pygmy honey gathering song, let me know. And, after you’ve listened to it, could you please let me know what it sounds like.

Thing is, this totally knocked me back, I was really, really (and totally unreasonably) pissed off. My limbic system kicked in (the bit of the brain that controls emotions and such like), and has stayed kicked in ever since, at least in respect of college / school. When this kicks in, your logic functions shut down and you just have to go with it.

In some ways this is great, I know that I am too pissed off to think about it, so there is no point trying. This is very liberating, especially around Christmas, it means I can just enjoy the festivities. However, there is a suspicion in my mind that this realization is itself logical, which means that I’ve got past the limbic system and am very capable of doing some work. But you can overanalyze these things.

More interestingly, I’ve always thought of myself as the sort of guy who was very open to criticism, and actually sought it out. I am aware that I can get defensive, especially on things close to my heart, but I’ve always thought that I’ve had a pretty positive approach to this sort of thing, but this little episode would indicate otherwise.

Or perhaps, I used to be, but am not anymore, which I wouldn’t really categorise as progress.

But that’s not the only thing I’ve noticed about myself. I was wrapping some presents for my kids (or, to be more accurate, one present, the Mother of My Children had bought and wrapped all the others – so no change there) and I wrote her name very carefully in very fancy script, lots of twirls and such like. If it had been half neat, you would have put your mortgage on it being a chick’s handwriting.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I would have never, ever done in my previous existence. I would have scrawled it quickly, if it turned out legible, that would have been a plus.

Is it possible that I am changing in some very subtle way, and I can only observe this from the things I do as I certainly don’t feel any different?

Or is possible that I drank one too many glasses of wine before writing this?

Happy Christmas.

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