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?

Things have obviously changed a lot in 30 years... on my secondary PGCE course one of the optional courses in the summer term was Teaching PE: this was for a group of students whose main subjects were Maths, Science, English, Foreign Languages and possibly History and Geography though I wouldn't like to swear to it.

Two of the teachers in my placement school were Maths And PE teachers. Presumably they'd done either my course or a similar one!

The worst student teacher I can think of is me. I'm a great tutor but give me more than three in a group and I fall to pieces. It's not crowd control, either: it happened a few years ago when in front of a group of adults, all of whom had chosen to be there and were perfectly happy with the fact that I was the most competent and experienced of the lot of us.

No, I don't know why. If I did I might have passed my PGCE course...

I've related this one before, but - a lovely girl, academically a whizz, but lacked the confidence to command a class; I tried to help her plan, but she couldn't seem to think ahead......the day came when, after working with groups and getting to know the class, with me around for support, she was left with the class for a full session. The head, meanwhile, had asked me to take some other admin. work. After half an hour, the message came; "Can you come down and take the class over? I've run out of things to do!" Naturally I went down and stepped into the breach, but I did try to explain to her that back up plans are a necessity with a primary class. I wasn't much older than her, and was oddly conflicted about "dobbing her in" to her tutor, but as out wise deputy said, I was being cruel to be kind. What did she think would happen in a few short months if she had her own primary class? Even if she was able to get over a false start, children only get each school year once.

I've come across a couple like that, @1990b.
We had one about three years ago, an Oxbridge grad who thought he was more capable than anyone in the department. He took no advice. Mansplained the GCSE topic to me that I'd been teaching for years. Lazy and entitled.When he was warned that he was failing he said he had mental health issues and we'd not supported him enough. He passed (just), but failed to get a job at any of the state schools he applied to. He got a job at a private school.

I have worked with the whole range - for the utterly brilliant to the downright dreadful.

One point I would like to make though is in response to a pp who complained at the cost of their PGCE and how they were not getting value for money about of their school mentor. Please bear in mind that said mentor is a FT teacher with a very high workload who gets paid not one penny to train you. I have had a couple of very demanding trainees who seems oblivious to the fact that all of the extra time they were demanding from me - to help them to write their lesson plans or provide hem with teaching resources, or to complain at length about their uni, the HT, the kids, the other trainees - all of that time was at a cost to me. I refused to have a trainee for a couple of years following one particularly trying individual.

@ladyvimes

Most trainees need support to become good teachers. Sometimes you get one who is lazy and disinterested.

I’ve met a lot more terrible teachers though. Used to do supply and the amount of schools that I went in that had no planning whatsoever was crazy! I had no idea what I was supposed to be teaching. One school I went to I arrived late (as they had phoned late) and the headteacher was covered for the class. He literally said hello and left; I didn’t even know what year group they were!! There was no timetable anywhere and of course no planning. It was so unprofessional!!

Tb f if you were a supply teacher part of your pay is an ability to think on your feet and have some idea of what different age classes can do. Your agency should have told you which class you had.

We did Elie Wiesel's Night at school for the holocaust and I think that was spot on.

I had a student teacher in my class once. She showed up on her first day with a very short skirt on. A child in my class asked her why her skirt was so short. She told the 5 year old it was because she had nice legs…

None of our local training centres train students in my subject so I don't have much experience to share. I have observed PGCE students when I have covered lessons; the student did the actual teaching but I was the qualified adult in the room. On a 1st TP, I had a quick chat before the lesson as to how much they wanted to do (register/explanation/plenary etc) and I picked up the rest. He was pretty good and keen to observe me teaching the same class in my own subject.

However, my own PGCE experience in the early 90s was mixed. 1st TP school was great. I got on well with my department and they asked me to go with them on their summer tour. The 2nd one was awful. I worked with one woman in my main subject who thought that there was only one way to do anything. She wasn't as good a musician as she thought she was and her actual subject knowledge wasn't that comprehensive. That was a case of head down & get through it although I did complain to my tutor and he agreed that her demands were ridiculous so they didn't send anyone to her again.

Fifty years later I can still remember the student teacher who summoned an eight year old class mate to the front of the class and asked him why he was not wearing the proper school jumper and why he had odd socks on. “Does your mother not check what you are wearing before you leave for school?” Total silence - until another child replied “His mother died last week”

I've observed some really poor student teachers and some brilliant ones. One would be science teacher had such a thick accent that nobody could understand him and I had to try to interpret. One I wasn't observing, but I happened to be outside the door when two girls ran out hysterical and crying. He had been teaching about puberty. Goodness knows what he said.

We had a student teacher for a textiles class. She had a giant box with her and she pulled out crazy fabrics, glitter, sequins, feathers. All sorts of things we never got to see or use and put them all on the main table we were gathered around. She then chatted away for twenty minutes and put everything away again.

These have been interesting reading. I'm not a teacher, but my daughter has just started teacher training (school based PGCE).

I think she will do well. She is hard working, keen, organised, and is good at listening to feedback and learning from it. Those seem to be the things most people have picked out.

She had a few induction sessions over the summer and has been very impressed so far with the organisation and support both from the lead school in the consortium and the school in which she will be working this term. She goes to a different school teacher in the spring term.

Good luck with your training, OP.

I wonder why you posted here rather than in the staff room section? Would have educational professionals on tap. I can give you an awful story, my own final TP. Started very well, my student mentor was a RQT (just started their second term as an RQT after NQT in the school with same class). Lovely teacher, class loved her, lots of great advice however, with hindsight it was hugely unfair to give her a trainee so soon. With hindsight too, I wasn’t ready, too anxious, too keen to follow the rules, too concerned about doing the right thing, took feedback far too much to heart. As my teaching time increased I began to struggle with classroom management (also worth mentioning the class had a rep of being difficult for anyone other than the class teacher but this doesn’t excuse my failure.) I asked my uni mentor for support and this got back to the head. The head confronted my uni mentor and was very defensive saying there were no behaviour issues in the school (something that had never been said and took the mentor off guard). From then on it went downhill. I was effectively doomed. My anxiety went through the roof, I was tearful but carried on. Had coaching from mentor, plus university tutors on behaviour management. My school mentor helped. Head went out of way to belittle and rubbish my efforts so my progress was hampered as I mentally couldn’t cope. After a positive observation and uni mentor feedback, Head decided she’d observe me on my own (not usual practice). Lesson was okay, a resource issue which wasn’t my fault at all. I expected to get feedback on some positive points as well as constructive criticism as was a trainee. Nope, ripped to pieces, children enjoyed lesson as they had done it before, behaved as she was in the room, am sure I would have been blamed for WWII if she’d thought of it. This broke me. In the end, I was passed (massive drop from the great grade I had previously), mentors were both a little shell shocked. University sent me to their counsellor and it was decided I could leave early as I had completed the compulsory time. I was a wreck, panic attacks, couldn’t go out….Clearly I shouldn’t have been in a classroom. Didn’t apply for NQT for over a year as was so messed up.

Is this the type of story you were after? I am clearly the wrong personality for a classroom as I shouldn’t have been so fragile.

When I was doing my PGCE another student was also at the same place on placement. My mentor told me at the end the student casually tried to get her to sign off loads of lessons they hadn’t done. This was about 15 years ago when it was just a paper form the mentor signed.

@Verbena87 That post it trick is epic! I'm going to use that!

@Guineapigbridge

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.

Was this Hampshire in mid naughties?! May have been me! In my defence, I realised quite early on it wasn't for me, I had anxiety issues and classroom had been left in absolute state by last teacher (who left). I was determined to stick the year out but got a job in a different career in which I am still going strong 14 years later

I had a secondary placement student. He was taking my class and it was chaos from the start, he swore at a few of the kids, pretended meetings hadn't happened, lied to his mentor about an agreed upon support plan and argued about handing my class back.

Somehow the university still passed him. Go figure.

I had been teaching about 2 years and we had a student teacher who had come from a very difficult first placement and we were asked to nurture him. He was very tall, weedy, sniffed constantly and sighed all the time. He had two of my classes. One was a bottom set of 11 year olds. He wanted to read a novel called 'The Machine Gunners' about a boy growing up in North Shields during the second world war. It is an old book but funny and exciting - but it was old-fashioned even then. They loved the story because they lived near North Shields but absolutely hated him- he was terrible at reading aloud and always off sick. There was a character in the book called Sicky Nicky and this student teacher was called Nicholas. Every time he was off they would say 'Sicky Nicky off bad again Miss? Can you read the book with us today?'

He was teaching my other class- Y10 Set 6 out of 8- to write an American Detective style story - kind of 1950s Private Eye stuff- an idea he had discussed with his university tutor who said could we let him have a go at it because they thought it could be interesting. It could have been if he had been willing to adapt his thinking. The class were baffled by the whole thing. He started a lesson asking them how many Raymond Chandler novels they had read. I can picture them looking at me and raising their eyebrows or shaking their heads in puzzlement. One boy, called Frankie said loudly and sounding frustrated, 'Sir what are you on about man?'

He didn't improve- had loads of help and encouragement. He was off a lot too. We could not pass him but the university asked us not to fail him and they let him do another teaching placement at a local sixth form college - 'He might be better with older, more academic ones' - which he failed. They then let him withdraw from the course with anxiety, even though he'd spent 4 terms doing a 3 term PGCE and done really badly on 3 placements.They just would not allow anyone to fail the course.

Tb f if you were a supply teacher part of your pay is an ability to think on your feet and have some idea of what different age classes can do. Your agency should have told you which class you had.

This is so true.

I've been lucky that I have had a few hobbies over the years so although I have no idea what the GCSE syllabus is for photography I know enough about David Baily that I had the class produce their own black and white portraits.

I also used to carry a set of logic puzzle cards that could be used when I got something like a tutorial but with no guidance as to the topic.

And a pencil case full of pens with my name on, every class taken by a supply teacher at least 6 students will claim not to have a pen.

Supply teachers have my utter admiration!

@YerAWizardHarry I’m a secondary teacher and we have 8 periods a day at my school - different years and often different subjects. It’s a huge amount of work, and the tutors here will check the folder of lesson plans and expect one for every period.
Not saying I agree with the workload in the slightest, I’d be happy with 1-2 pages from a student but it’s what the university demands.
I get paid the sum total of fuck all to mentor students, to check these endless lesson plans and to sometimes fix the mess my classes are in after placement and there’s not a snowballs chance in hell I’ll be ok getting the lesson plans to review the night before, not least because there’s no time to fix it if needed before the class actually arrives.

Supply teachers in our day used to either be anonymous and stick bloody shrek on or be older sorts with amazing stories andd jokes who left as mysterious legends. We had a russian woman around 70 perhaps who took us for art once, we created a whole fake life story for her she was that intriguing.

I too had an RQT as a mentor - who was also very young - and seemed it - and had to mentor me out of his area of subject knowledge. I did say at the time that this was a bit awkward for both of us as I had more experience with kids and teaching than him but it wasn’t changed. I think I must have been really difficult for him to mentor me. Especially as I didn’t meet his expectation that I wouldn’t spend every waking minute of my life lesson planning which he seemingly did. I got on much better with my second mentor who had been around the block a few times and was happy for me so try stuff out rather than replicate exactly what she did

@pollyglot

*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. Absolutely this. I had a terrible mentor (aforementioned teacher who just wandered off during a lesson I was leading, and never came back). I complained to the university and made a big fuss and was moved to a different placement. You are paying the university £9k for your training, make sure they are putting you with mentors who will actually provide that training.*

Well, actually, the university is charging the huge fees to train teachers, but the mentors are used basically as slave labour. Back in the day, I had an enviable reputation as an outstanding teacher whose students achieved consistently brilliant results. I had at least one student teacher for 4 weeks of every term. The workload, on top of the usual preparation, marking, pastoral duties and so on was horrendous. I was expected to critique every lesson before and after delivery. This involved at least an hour a day extra, in addition to sitting in and writing copious notes on the student's performance. After discussion, these had to be written up for their file, with a summary of suggested future actions and advice. There would be constant questions, crises of confidence that required soothing, demands for resources...It was very demanding and draining, when I had to keep in mind my students' exams and internal assessments, always conscious of the time constraints. The financial compensation for all this work? Peanuts. A fraction of that paid to their lecturers. I'm not surprised that many teachers simply refused to take on this huge responsibility.

The mentor mentioned in the original part of the post was actually so bad he made his own life more difficult, he wrote an observation form on the same lesson THREE times (two negative, one positive) he hadn’t actually seen the lesson though, he was off sick that day and wrote it based on the lesson plan I’d sent in advance. He also dropped a wet teabag in my handbag. Although when I said about pursuing it with the uni I meant more about being moved to a placement who were actually prepared to support me.

I’m a little jealous that you got any financial compensation for mentoring though, none of the schools I’ve worked in have ever given anything other than time for mentoring trainees, and even then not that much!

I’m starting my FE placement this morning and this thread has been so helpful thank you. Yes the thread’s title is a bit divisive but I think it’s encouraged more posters to share. So basically the advice I take from this is: listen to all including students, I know a lot but by no means ‘it all’, don’t be the cool teacher and flout the basic college rules in place but be flexible and negotiate my class’s, show students the respect they deserve by expecting high behaviour and work standards and always remember my mentor’s time is precious and not to waste it. Have I got it??? Oh. And smile 😊