Advice for a trainee teacher please (school-based training)

[ZebraDog]

My DD is doing school-based teacher training. She is really struggling at the moment, working 7:30-10:30 every day plus weekends and feeling overwhelmed. She is putting in the hours and doing her best but finds her school have incredibly high expectations of her. She is getting observations which rate her lessons a mix of 'satisfactory and good', which IMO for 9 weeks in is not bad! She is hard on herself though. I think the way the school present feedback tends to skim over positives and focus on negatives.
Her mentor is tough on her, I think she feels the strain that any mistake she makes is her fault and so she corrects her during lessons for tiny things, takes over randomly (no explanation why) and undermines her in front of the children.
DD has been quite unhappy this week although keeping going. She realises she will get there and just has to get through the year but it seems extremely challenging.
The school know she is stressed but she wants to appear organised and proactive to avoid further criticism.
Any teachers out there with words of wisdom I can pass on?

Sometimes keep it simple. What is the lesson objective eg what do you want the children to learn/be able to do? Make sure thd children know this clearly so that they can be successful. Also work on consistent and clear behaviour management.

The workload sounds normal. The mentor taking over mid-lesson and undermining her is odd and she needs to learn to let go. Your DD should be discussing this with her.

It's a very hard year. At some point your DD will hit The Wall (as it was called on my PGCE) which is perfectly normal. She will then need to decide if teaching is for her.

If she continues to have issues with her mentor, there should be a member of SLT that she can approach for advice. Failing that she could speak to her union.

Your poor DD! I'm doing school based this year, get observed at least weekly, and although I get thorough feedback my school would not dream of giving me an ofsted rating on my lessons. Firstly, not even ofsted rate individual lessons any more, and secondly we're only 9 weeks in. Feedback should be based on working towards meeting the standards, not the 1-4 ratings.

Regarding the undermining - that is poor and unacceptable. I would speak to the most understanding member of slt, or does she have an external tutor? They are there to help!

Posting as I did my PGCE two years ago. As previous poster said the workload is completely normal at this point and further! Also I would say the grading is also normal as we had every observation graded in those terms as well. Also, even though Ofsted don't grade individual lessons observations within school still often do.

With reference to the mentor taking over her lessons that should only happen if something is hugely wrong or unsafe! IMHO mentors would rather see how you react to a lesson going off kilter as that is a major learning point!

Advice, make sure she takes a day off at the weekend. Mine always had to be a Saturday as Sunday was always getting ready for the next week so Saturday could be a free day! This greatly helped!

Fingers crossed for your DD and these tricky years! PM me if I can help. P.s. Is she doing primary or secondary?

Thank you. Lots of reassuring words. She spoke to her uni tutor tonight who is in tomorrow to observe and going to speak to the school about the mentor in a subtle but clear way. Hopefully that will help.
The interrupting is really knocking her confidence as she feels like every lesson is wrong.
She is primary by the way and in Year 6. I think that is why the school are so concerned that she is a really high standard... but so much pressure!

It is a really hard year as you are trying to do as much as you can from what takes 4 years in a BEd. However it goes really quickly and the reward is it seems easier to get a job after school based training. The trick is to keep on top of your paperwork, learn as much as possible and just accept you can't really do much else for the year. I did it 4 years ago and it's fantastic , having your own class is a joy , good luck to her.