Worst student teacher you have seen on placement

[icecreamandapple]

About to start a PGCE very soon, just wondering are there any teachers who's had a teacher student who's been shockingly bad? Not that I am planning to be by the way, I'm just curious. Hopefully I will be ok but I keep telling myself that I'm sure some teachers would have seen some bad student teachers. Also what happens if a teacher is so bad can they get removed from the placement if it's affecting the children education and progress?

My school had an RE trainee teacher who made racist comments in tutor time…

That was the end of their teacher training

Yes- one who always turned up without any planning, smelling of alcohol from the night before!
A tutor had arranged to come to her placement school to observe her lesson and when she came to student teacher admitted she had forgotten to plan!

One who changed into her PE shirt in front of the Year 5 class...

The worst I've had are the people who aren't prepared to put the work in and those who don't want to listen to any suggestions or advice.

Overwhelmingly over the decades students have been great, but these two stand out.

I’m not a teacher, but when I was a teenager we had this student teacher who came once per week, and he was a very nervous person. His voice would break constantly and you could barely hear him from the back of the class.

This was in a horrible Glasgow secondary in a rough area, so you can imagine the class was not full of sympathetic onlookers. The one time he had to lead the class without the teacher he just could not get people to be quiet and work and ended up shouting, but not shouting like a teacher, sort of as if he was about to cry. It was horrible.

My son's teacher was a new graduate. She presented as lazy, or at least, low-energy. She never tidied up the classroom or got the children to tidy it. There was stuff everywhere. She left teaching after a year. I just don't think it was for her: not organised or energetic enough.

Yes, I’ve seen some horrific ones-they don’t usually make it to the end of the first school placement.

We’ve had students with dreadful literacy skills which don’t improve despite support, inappropriate behaviour in the classroom which continues after discussions with the mentor etc

You’re going to be grand, don’t worry.

I’m an experienced teacher with consistently good or outstanding lesson observations. Here are some ways I’ve screwed up in case you need them for reassurance in the coming months…

*rushed round whacking out post it’s for a plenary activity without realising a year 9 had cunningly vandalised one or two in the middle of the stack. I walloped one down in front of a kid on his final behaviour warning and he went white with shock. It said ‘wanker’ in capital letters.

*started teaching a lesson I’d already taught that group the previous week. They told me, but not till about 10 minutes in.

*taught for 2 hours with clay smeared into one of my eyebrows

*burnt myself badly enough to blister whilst doing a health and safety demo with a glue gun.

A trainee can absolutely fail placement. They are observed regularly (usually once a week) and feedback given. Concerns will be raised to a uni, support put in place and it's monitored.

I find it really odd that a) You don't know this and b) You've asked for shit stories about teachers Do you want to freak yourself out? Trainee teachers have a bloody hard time. The kids know/sense they aren't real teachers, the classroom isn't their own, they have to juggle what the class teacher would do with what their uni wants them to do. Everyone is shit at some point, it's what you do about it that matters.

As a year 10 student I did 2 weeks work experience in a junior school with a class teacher whose maths skills were so shockingly poor she kept turning to me to correct her. It was painful.

I've had a couple of very poor student teachers.

1 was tasked with preparing a starter task. Week 4 of the placement as they didn't feel comfortable week 3 (1 long lesson per week - college setting)

1 week to prepare a 20 minute maths task. Loads of support via email. Asked him to send it to me the day before. He didn't.. turned up with nothing. I had to cover it. He'd also not filled in his journal. I stayed late to help him.

Rinse and repeat. Lots of support given in the week via email. Still no journal filled in either.

3rd time (week 6 on placement) I said well you have 20 minutes to fill. He didn't handle it well, the students complained and I sent him back to his tutor and filed a report.

He was on a full bursary - something like £24k and had done precisely nothing in 6 weeks.

We had a student teacher who would constantly use then instead of than! Where instead of were etc.Her spelling was horrendous too. At 14 all I though was “ How can you teach if your grammar is that bad?”

Another student teacher would try so hard to be your friend that he would go off on a tangent and nothing would actually be taught and he wondered why tests and quizzes were failed.

Oh so many. I had one a few years back who kept telling me my lessons could be better and I should do some academic reading. Not that it matters as it was the tone it was said in more than anything, but I have been Head of Dept for a good while now. My lessons are fine.

Another in a previous school had to be moved on because he was caught going through another teacher’s email inbox on her laptop.

Yes, teachers can be moved off placement but in my experience, another placement is found quickly so their year can continue. Even email-reader was able to carry on…

Enjoy the year. Hard work as you will know, but you will learn so much. Try to be a sponge and make the most of being able to watch loads of lessons - start figuring out what sort of teacher you’re going to be. All the best, I hope it all goes well.

I remember a student teacher who was visibly so nervous her voice was shaking, she was sweating copiously and of course the children picked up on it and were terribly behaved. I felt she was let down by everyone, she had a formal observation for the first lesson she ever taught, there was no building up to it by doing 10 minutes here and there, just this observation with 4 adults in the classroom, 2 of them taking copious notes and not saying anything. It was dreadful, the most embarrassing thing I have seen , and it was such a shame, she had prepared in minute detail, written out planned questions for the children, got everything ready but she just fell apart. She just left the building at the end of the lesson, we never saw her again. It was awful.

This is not a ‘worst teacher’ but a worst situation as there was literally nothing that could be done to help, and the uni set them up to fail.

I had an international PGCE student in my reception class as a trainee teacher.

Unfortunately she had an extremely, extremely thick accent to the point where I couldn’t understand her. I could just about do in a quiet class with really focussed listening and lots of repetition, but the children couldn’t. We didn’t have a successful obs because she couldn’t communicate. They would outwardly tell her ‘what?’ and cry because they didn’t understand her. I don’t know how she passed the interview.

I contacted the university immediately and was immediately fobbed off and insinuated that I was some kind of racist When they came in at my insistence, they immediately saw what they problem was but felt it MY responsibility to give her feedback such as ‘enunciate words’ ‘speak clearly’ ‘ensure pronunciation reflects standard English’. She couldn’t teach phonics, because she couldn’t say the sounds. Obviously it was how the woman spoke and she was new to the country, she wasn’t going to develop anything vaguely neutral within a term.

I left during that term and she joined my partner teacher’s class. The university just said that ‘she would learn’.

I think of her sometimes- a shit situation all round and I felt so sorry she was in that position. She must have felt really uncomfortable and me + my TAs felt like utter dicks asking her to repeat constantly.

Teacher shortage, I suppose…

We had one fail their placement (he was truly appalling). And another lost a set if coursework back in the days of coursework.

That was an interesting reference to write....

I had a student teacher for English in secondary school. On several occasions she wrongly 'corrected' my spelling, which really annoyed me and I was far too shy, and too polite, to stand up for myself. She didn't last long, she failed her placement. Nice woman, just not right for teaching.

One that stuck out for me was a young man who thought he was better than all the staff and volunteers (all female) who knew the children and had been there for years.
He ignored my advice on how to handle certain students, couldn't remember names and ended up with a class covered in glitter (he ignored me again) and demanded I clean it up.
He was promptly handed the hoover and had the 4 women who are normally in that class watch him clean up his mess.
Thankfully he learned from his mistakes and treated everyone with more respect from then on.

So my advice would be listen, if someone has been there longer than you and gives you some advice they are doing it to help you succeed and to help the children - don't ignore it

I haven't seen a really bad trainee teacher. The ones I have trained have sometimes been lazy or not listened to advice, but they all eventually pulled their finger out when it became apparent they wouldn't pass if they continued that way.

When I was a trainee, I saw some awful teachers though. One PE teacher teaching science, who was just telling the kids stuff that was plain wrong. (I can't remember exactly what but something like the air you breathe out has no oxygen on and deoxygenated blood is blue)
Also teachers who just didn't care about the kids in the class, or about me as a trainee. Who just disappeared halfway through a lesson and didn't come back. Or constantly shouted at and insulted children. All in a "good" school.

We had a male trainee who stood around and waited to be told what to do. I am a TA, and he would say "we are doing a painting input" then fail to sort any part or demonstrate what we were doing. It was awful. I get that 22 year old men are used to women doing everything for them, but he bragged to us one day that his mum had washed his clothes for him since he had been out drinking the night before. And he stood around watching us cleaning up, doing jobs, helping kids and just expected to do a lesson and literally nothing else.

I had a trainee teacher who argued with me about her feedback, she was removed from the placement after that as the relationship had broken down and she wasn’t prepared to take onboard anything we said to her.

Equally as a trainee I was on the receiving end of poor mentoring, and I was probably seen as being shockingly bad, so don’t be afraid to ask for more support if you need it. I really regret not pursuing it with the university at the time as it really affected my early career. I always aim to be the mentor I wish I’d had.

A student teacher started off by telling all his new classes what an experienced teacher he was, when the kids clearly knew he wasn’t and was totally bull shitting them

I also had one poor student teacher with very severe dyslexia. Luckily the school we were in was mainly lovely kids so they were quite understanding when he misspelled words but I think he would have really struggled in a difficult school.

Worst one ever couldn't maintain eye contact with me or the students. He was just painfully introverted but adament this was the job for him. It was incredibly difficult watching him desperately trying to persuade his tutor he could do it whilst staring at his shoes. He should have been weeded out at interview stage.

One who forgot he had a lesson and didn't come. Carried on sitting in the staff room.