New teacher's diary - January 2008
Steve Rivers (PGDE: Primary student)
It’s now January and I managed to survive all the tasks that have been set since my last diary entry. The first was my tutor visit on my previous placement. There was a definite nervous feeling when my tutor quietly walked into the room at 9.30 am on a Friday and sat watching me and taking notes about my teaching. It’s not the most pleasant experience I’ve had but the feedback was extremely useful and helped me in my final week, and it’s something I’ll have to get used to during the remaining placements and my probation year. Needless to say (as I’m still here!) I passed. The final week was probably the most intense as I had much more teaching responsibility, particularly when the class teacher was absent for three days, throwing me in at the proverbial deep end. I was in a large school with three other PGDE students and we were all happy to relax and breathe a collective sigh of relief over this hurdle being overcome.
Hard work didn’t stop there though as there was an assignment on child development to complete within the following week or two. We had to write about the range of ability within our placement class and relate this to theory on child learning. Christmas celebrations started straight from the handing-in deadline however and the pubs surrounding Moray House were merry with relieved students. I think I can speak for everyone in saying that the three-week break at Christmas was craved and deserved after a constant stream of lectures, workshops, presentations and placements since August. I suspect though that I wasn’t the only one who had to work over much of the Christmas break in order to pay the bills.
Since returning in early January, we have had to perform a group presentation to a set of fellow students and tutors about an area of the maths curriculum. I think perform is the correct word to use as we decided upon a nursery rhyme theme and managed to involve members of the other groups in activities and singing! This feels like it has been good practice in confidence building as the next time around we’ll be presenting on our own.
At present I am preparing to go on my next placement later this week; I will be teaching a Primary 5 class. The workshops over the past few weeks have been geared towards teaching at this level, and the expected level of responsibility for teaching and planning is greater, so it should be a busy few weeks ahead.