Throwing Chalk: diary of a trainee teacher

I am not a picture of optimism today. After yesterday (short whine follows in this post and no doubt in more depth in the next one). I don't get paid for teaching but I did spend all day at the college yesterday. In the morning - we ran out of time I never got to teach.

In the afternoon I did. And had a bright 45 seconds afterwards, before my mentor said (faint praise sandwich) "Well they seemed to enjoy that..." I'm not sure he even bothered with a but before he started to weigh in. All the ways I failed. Bla bla bla. 25 minutes later i wasn't crying (this time) but I don't think I can carry on working with him. Which leaves me in an invidious position - as I'm not sure I have any choice at this time of year. And yet, he clearly doesn't trust me to do any teaching bla bla.

Whinge. I am really not happy. It isn't working out it seems to me. I need to speak to my college people today by email and tomorrow in person. I'm sure it will work out fine. But I do need to write it all down in terrible detail to get it out of my head. I'm not enjoying this lying in bed staring at the ceiling thing. This black hole, endless helpless deathly wanting-to-give-up thinking. I am either unusually sensitive (probably) or he is unusually unsensitive (probably) - or both - which is the worst combination possible. Hey ho.

I had my observation 3 weeks ago. Bev only came in to log me back onto YouTube as he'd unwittingly logged me out of his account by logging on in the staff room. He did, of course, in that moment of confusion garner enough information to give me some deconstructive commentary about how the class had, 'seemed out of control'. Yeh, well welcome to the world of the trainee teacher, buddy. No, scratch that, *buddy* - even ironically - I think I've fallen out of dislike here and into a hate position. I'm close to loathing.

So since then: my subject - non-fiction media has been ignored in the GCSE classes and we have concentrated on the book he is teaching. Stupidly the students have been asked to write two essays at once - his and mine - and his has had the priority. At the end of another class where all I did was mark some essays and talk to pupils about (mainly) his essays, there were sniggers when I said I wanted the rest of the essays in by next week. If my mentor, Bev, is happy to forget about my essay, my teaching - me in general - then why shouldn't they? I don't blame them. Beta male - 2nd division teaching assistant.

All of this after he had asked me to prepare a presentation on his book - "Just 15 minutes to give them a fresh perspective." He then changed that idea 30 minutes before the lesson started, "You don't have to do this if you don't want to, but could you prepare something on the scene where xxx meets yyy. That would be really useful." So I did as I was asked, I worked out an overview, I pulled out quotes. I continued with it as he started to teach his lesson. Then it got to break time and he continued. So I started just marking essays. I fed back to some of the students. Their essays are not great. After all his many lectures, not much is feeding through to them. Like with my essay on media, I want to see what they're doing individually and make sure they understand what they should be doing. All this board lecturing, it's not making any difference.

So that leads us up to the afternoon. Well after an interminable 2.5 hours mooching around the staff room and going for a walk. Bev doesn't exactly invite me into his lunchtime world. At break time he goes and sits down next to his mates. I'm not exactly welcomed in with open arms. Heck, I can be shy, I can be stand-offish. I'm not the greatest person, but I'm getting a rum deal here.

So the next post - is the afternoon. A2 English, what fun!

Posted by Stipey Sullivan at 12:08 Comments