Throwing Chalk: diary of a trainee teacher

Back at North Brassington for more being-taught-to-be-a-teacher lessons. It was sunny but I was tired - tired - due to silly going to bed-late-ness.

This week we were team presenting umm presentations on various aspects of current Educational thinking. My team were presenting on Professor Frank Coffield's report on the future of Further Education. Before that we watched a presentation on Basic Skills - and I won't go into details because I want to be critical.

There seems to be a split in my class between those of us with little experience who are there to get the teaching qualification but also hope to learn something while we're there, and those that are already teaching in F.E. (nursing, plumbing, tourism, ESOL - vocational subjects mainly). These people are in some ways clearly the most experienced people, but also the most complainy and cynical.

"Don't ask any questions so we can go home early." We get told after dinner.

So everyone sits there in silence, bored, until we are allowed to go 30 minutes early. It's not liket the lessons are always interesting, or you feel like you've learnt very much, but isn't the point that as adults we should ask more and then we might get our questions answered and we might find the process a little bit more interesting? Perhaps I'm just the opposite of a cynic - which is not how I would normally describe myself.

If you do ask a question, they tut and mutter under their breath. Like you're a swot. Fancy caring. Idiot. It's a bit weird. It's like - is this how they want their own classes to behave. I know that exam passing is the main thing, but it doesn't have to be the only thing, does it? Can we not debate - or can we not have a debate that doesn't just decend into whining about paperwork & the quality of the whiteboard where you work?

Hmmm? How about that? I'm not just being a twat about it, they are nice people, it's just they particularly annoyed me this week.

First, the most (ask no questions) person - who gets paid quite a fair bit [I've just cut some more personal info, cos I want this to be anonymous] - she gave the first presentation. And I was struck by the thought: she's no better than she was at the start of last year. This is as dull as her *micro-teaching* assignment. She looks bored. She's going through the motions. Each slide has about a 100 words on it and she's just reading them off to us. It can be done better than that, surely - but she has got her style, her level & she's sticking with it. Disappointing.

Then on to my team's presentation. I tried to make it light hearted (and very quick - my bit anyway). The presentation by 4 people was meant to last 30 minutes, but one of our team had 31 slides and that seemed to last half of my life. The No Questions lady was texting during that anyway. And chatting to Ms Hard-Done-By.

Our actual tutor either didn't notice them or was too polite to bother. I saw them and was tempted to throw out a question to them. But really? They're not interested. They don't really need to know about Coffield's scepticism about Learning Styles.

But that's my rant. This was my last time of driving to North Brassington as the car is going as of Saturday so I'll be cycling there as the winter approaches. Which was nice last year. No it was, hopefully I'm over my injury and won't have any problems getting there or I'll be on a 3 buses journey every Thursday. Which won't be much fun.

Posted by Stipey Sullivan at 17:02 Comments