Struggling with PGCE

[Hilly1990]

Hi Everyone,

I could really benefit from some advice in terms of my PGCE. I am two weeks away from finishing my 1st term and struggling massively. I battle depression and anxiety which I feel makes the course 10 times harder never mind the fact that I also have an 18 month old baby.

Typically I get up at 5:30 every day with my LO and get to work for 7/7:30 and plan before lessons. I am currently teaching around 2 lessons a day and must create each lesson plan from scratch beforehand. Most days my host teachers will not let me plan earlier than the day before due to needing to see where the students are at after the last lesson. This means that by the time my host teachers have checked my lesson plans it is usually the next morning or really late at night and I am then stressing myself out about work. My first term has been a constant battle, it just feels like never ending criticism. One thing goes well and then something else needs addressing. I have spoken to my tutor about how I am struggling and they are aware that I need more support. Despite this I feel like I am enjoying teaching two of my classes because they treat me like their teacher and they respect me. It is lovely to see relationships forming. I do however, have another top set class that I find rather standoffish, I feel like I have no relationship with the students whatsoever despite constantly walking around the class trying to get to know them, feeling like a stalker when they try to shush me away. I dread teaching this class because I feel like they know I am training and think I am rubbish. I tend to start off okay and then I see students being passive (looking like they have switched off) and I get nervous and forget my plans or muddle things up. I honestly don't know why it happens but I can't seem to get out of this rut and despite other classes generally going okay I cannot move to standards met until I learn to break this wall that I have with this class. My host teacher told me today she was concerned I couldn't teach the older higher abled students but I honestly don't think it is that I think it is that specific class making me nervous. I start a new placement in Jan and I am hoping that I will not have this problem and can begin with a confidence which encourages kids to believe in me. I feel like it is too late now for this current class. On top or that there is another trainee who is constantly being praised and going from strength to strength whilst I seem to be getting criticised every day.

Is this normal in the first term? Do I have a problem that cannot be dealt with? Is there anything I can do to help myself overcome the obstacle?

I would really appreciate hearing your opinions/advice about teacher training

Thanks
Mo

Huge 'Well done' to you for being so reflective ... but a massive 'Fuck No' to your current mentor!

The mentor on my first placement was like this, planning day to day. She was an older single woman with just her job & cats. Her expectations were totally unreasonable. She hand-drew the illustrations to 4 separate phonics booklets every other day!

You should be planning for at least a week. You then just tweak to fit progress. Most often, it's only the groups that you set to fit the planning.

It's totally unreasonable to be expected to replan late at night or early in the morning.

It is very tough in your first term - you have a LOT to learn! But do realise that you should NOT be replanning on a day to day basis.

I could almost have written this (25+ years ago), although my children were a couple of years older - the PGCE was one of the toughest times of my life, so I completely get where you are. It does not sound as though you should be creating lessons plans completely from scratch, though. Are you working from a scheme of learning and is your host teacher not sharing their lesson plans with some ideas and resources with you? The criticism is never-ending in teaching - every lesson observation will have some "developmental" element which always sounds like criticism! I also had a difficult higher ability Year 9 class on my first school placement, who didn't want to be seen to engage with the "student teacher" and I was lucky enough to get some good advice from my tutor which helped me to survive. Older teenagers are very good at looking switched off - it doesn't always mean they aren't paying attention, though. Decide that they are going to be your favourite class, because you are going to learn so much from them. Fake it until you make it! If you are upbeat with them, and really act as though you are delighted to have them there with you, it will help how you and they feel. Can you create some sorting activities, or a snappy quiz or a team challenge so that they can use/consolidate what you have been teaching them in an engaging way - not for too long or you will lose pace, and don't go over the top with anything too complicated for the same reason (at least until you have them trained in such activities). There are loads of useful resources on TES etc that can help when you are tired and need to come up with something to show they are learning. I got the students to give me feedback on their learning, with reference to the learning objectives of the lesson, and usually they referred to being pleased they did well on the quiz or in the challenge. You need to turn it away from you, and focus on what the students are getting out of the lesson, and then make sure they know what they have learned - get them to reflect on it with a couple of bullet points of www/ebi (but always relating to what they have learned in the lesson).
Also, don't worry about comparisons with the other trainee - but do try to observe them or share a lesson if you can, to find out why they seem to be successful. You could ask your host teacher to sit in with you while you observe another teacher and together unpick the teaching and learning so you understand exactly what the other teacher does that makes the lesson work effectively.
Finally, I hated that my own children missed out on my time and energy while I was training and I was permanently exhausted - but it was worth it in the end because I had a career I loved and they had security.

It will get easier, I promise! I've been teaching for six years now and this is my advice:

1. Use Twitter! So many excellent lessons and resources are shared making life much easier
2. Don't get the kids to like you... much better to build relationship over the course of the year and this will come if they think that you know your stuff. Be confident and by all means fib to them... 'yes I may be doing my teacher training but my experience teaching in a prison for the past three years was excellent and this will be my fifth summer as a senior examiner for AQA...'
3. Learn what bits you can drop or get away with not doing. I'm trialing group feedback at the moment as my workload is so much- saved me so much time

What subject do you teach?

I am secondary English. I just feel like I have been through every extreme emotion possible this past term. I too have to complete 3 sides of A4 with every single question I will ask written on it as part of my lesson plans. It is so disheartening when you put your all into one and it gets ripped to shreds by the host. In terms of my journey so far I was given 2 ks4 classes and a ks3. The KS4 have their exams this year so I there has been a real pressure to ensure I am teaching them at a good enough standard. This was also why just 3 weeks in to training I was told I was nowhere near ready to teach the top set yet and to focus on my lessons with Ks3 for a few weeks first. I have still 13 weeks in only taught 6 starters with this too set and every time I am expected to come up with a creative, exciting, challenging and engaging starter about the same text. I actually think it would be easier to trach a lesson because in this instance my starter is almost a mini lesson in itself and I am really struggling to fit everything into 10/15 minutes. Thank you for the advice about seeing it as my favourite class though I will take that on board.
In terms of my other classes I started off with a huge emphasis on my planning and questioning. I worked incredibly hard on this and my tutor actually praised this in my observation, although I was still being told it needed work by my mentor/hosts. I then moved onto behaviour management, admittedly if I could start a fresh I would do some things differently in terms of making expectations known, but I think the conflicting advice I received has been the biggest hurdle on this one. I think I have recently realised i need to trust my instincts on this one. I am a natural nurturer something I was originally criticised for by my mentor, now however I am starting to see relationships forming even with the challenging students, their behaviour has changed significantly because of it, my way works! My mentor even admitted last week that she can see that my approach has worked on them and behaviour is more or less sorted. My new criticism is subject knowledge. The thing with this one is I have enough knowledge of my subject to gain a 2-1 in my field 7 years ago. I obviously read up on my subjects/texts before I reach them but ultimately I cannot know something that I don't know. When hosts read my lesson plans why don't they say - you could mention this etc? Sadly this seems to be a common thing in TT you are simply expected to have the knowledge and initiative that experienced teachers have. It certainly often feels like you are only learning from your mistakes and never being guided in the right direction from the offset. Someone said to me today it's like going for a driving lesson with the instructor giving you no advice watching you crash then explaining why you crashed and watching you do the same thing again.

Experience are so varied so many people are going from strength to strength but some have mentors who barely give them feedback. Some are being pushed and pulled apart to every extreme and some have lovely mentors who guide them through it lesson by lesson.

Please tell me this is normal. My heart tells me I have come so far and learnt so much. But the criticism I receive makes me feel like I have come nowhere and am destined to fail. :/

No real advice but hang in there. Two more weeks until you can leave the school behind.
Make sure your PGCE tutor knows about having to start from scratch every time you teach.
X

It sounds a little bit to me like when mentors etc are saying ' you could include this' and so on, they are trying to help you to strengthen your lesson. I don't understand , otherwise, how they will pass on their subject knowledge to new generations of teachers?

Do you have study guides on the KS4 texts? Some of them are really good these days and helpful sources of stuff about context and key subject terminology.

I wonder whether because you are feeling all at sea , you are taking constructive criticism as outright criticism. We all do that a lot sometimes. Teaching is a very criticising job - we get it in the neck constantly : from students (actually them the least, oddly!), parents, SLT, colleagues and -also- we self criticise! I am afraid that never goes away, but you will develop confidence and startegies over time.

It sounds like at least you are trying to change things and address the issues. Keep going, and your next placement might work out brilliantly.

Top sets at KS4 can be really obnoxious and sneering. They don't confine that to trainees but they are good at smelling fear... you need to exude the absolute authority that you know more than them.

OP I can sympathise as I finished the first term of a PGCE in a very unsupportive secondary school - unlike you I have withdrawn from the course - I was expected to be able to plan right from day 1 and to cover the class all day due to illness in my 2nd week and to plan each night. I'd do something and then be undermined by the 1:1 SEN assistant who would then go and tell the teacher I'd done it all wrong but who wouldn't read the lesson plans and would do nothing The end of the autumn term when I emailed my withdrawal was inevitable, I admire you for carrying on.