Student 'can only do' 8.30-3.30

[SpringisSpringing]

I'm fairly new to teaching so I really don't know what to do. I don't want to be responsible for failing someone.

It's just not enough time. I don't get the chance to talk to her properly.

She's okay. Not great- but if I actually had time to mentor her she might get better!

Putting the idea of directed time/meetings etc aside I just don’t see how she can get all the work done in that amount of time. I worked similarly short hours on one of my placements for a while - but I was only able to do that because it was a terrible placement with a teacher who didn’t want me and wouldn’t let me teach very much! So I had no planning or marking to do. On a proper decent placement I just don’t see how she’ll manage the workload!

Not easily cant no, except to say when I had a student recently we didn't discuss each and every lesson. We did communicate by email (although she wasn't great at replying). feedback was done after school hours but that was her choice and I actually found it unduly time consuming. I tended to feed other stuff back to her actual mentor who brought stuff up in their timetabled meeting. If students in secondary met for feedback and to discuss planning with every teacher whose classes they were attached to, that definitely would be impractical!

Because she shouldn't be teaching anything like a full timetable origamoo? She will certainly find it difficult to sustain in the long run but I wouldn't vilify anyone who tried to contain teaching to sensible hours.

I think the thing to focus on is whether or not she is managing to teach well.

Oh. Well, my experience is different. Not formal meetings, but definitely always a catch up. And the class teacher writes a lesson observation.

I'd check with the training programme tutors.
We only had to teach a couple of lessons throughout our PgCE, it was a pt placement as we weren't expected to work ft and have to do all the essays and other commitments of the course.
Surely, she can't be expected to study ft and work ft too, there aren't enough hours.
if she's expected to plan and provide resources too, she'll not have much time for teaching.

Many peope hold down teaching jobs on these hours. Then they work at home in the evenings and weekends. I work 8.30-5.30 at school and only very occasionally bring some marking home at the weekend.

It sounds like the school isnt capable of providing students with the required mentoring. What happened to PPA time?

Piggy, in primary a student is attached to a single class with a single class teacher, so the relationship is VERY different.

As the student is effectively 'taking over the class', the class teacher will necessarily need to e.g. ensure focus on particular children, provide information on SEN or family background etc etc and will in general be the conduit via which all planning and all school-specific information e.g. marking expectations are conveyed.

It does sound like a SECONDARY trainee might be able to work shorter hours (especially as the 'mark every book for the next lesson and adapt the next lesson depending on how the last one went is a specifically primary thing) but the student / teacher pairing is much more specific in a primary and so the short hours ting doesn't work.

45 minutes at the end of the day is plenty - but it cannot be done between 8.30 - 3.30 - those are child contact hours.

It also seems to be commonplace these days to expect a student to have own transport and be really flexible. When I was a student , I took tow buses and a train to get to my placement! I had to leave the minute the bell went! But , back then, there wasn't such a huge obsession with feedback - for staff or pupils!

Well, I hate presenteeism, but even I don't think you can do the job between 8.30 and 3.30.

Our children come in at 8.40. Now, you could walk in 10 minutes before them and be fine IF you had fully resourced the day's lessons the night before. Fully resourcing the next day would take longer than the 15 minutes available between all kids being gone at 3.15 and 3.30.

TBH I can spend all of that 15mins at the end of the day just straightening up the classroom and clearing my emails, never mind double checking what they have understood that day, finding appropriate resources to build on that/ pick up any gaps/ plan a catch up activity for 1 or 2 kids and send it all to the printer etc. And I've been doing the job 15 years. And I only have FOUR children in my class..

cant, where I work students are given immediate verbal feedback from the class teacher at the next break. It takes a couple of minutes. Formal feedback and targets are done once each week in a timetabled meeting slot with their subject mentor - usually during the mentor's PPA time. Mentors are usually given additional PPA time to cover this. This was roughly how it worked at my PGCE schools and the schools I've worked at since. Maybe I've just been really lucky.

I get that cant but surely the student themselves isn't working the same child contact hours during the day?

So , she can probably fit her planning and thinking in?

Clearly the OP can't manage this within her own workload but she could say she'd rather not mentor, if it won't work?
I'm wondering whether, if she were a brilliant student, this would seem such an issue.

I suppose the other thing to be aware of is that, in primary, teachers' performance management is linked to the performance of a single class. There is no allowance for having had a student, so there is a tension between 'allowing the student to be no better than adequate' and 'the progress the children must make' which does drive a wish to guide and monitor a student very closely.

Piggy,

Yes, the student does more planning during their own time in school - but when do i discuss it with her? It is often easy to see that plans and resources won't work - but explaining WHY is a) only fair and b) takes time.

I'm just going to laugh at 'additional PPA time'. To get additional PPA time, my class would need to be covered....who by?

I also always wrote a lesson observation if a student takes a lesson - but I wouldn't always go through it with the student. I'd offer to, of course. But I wouldn't get aerated if they said they couldn't. If there were issues, and we couldn't talk them through, I'd flag them up with the mentor.

I think I might be using mentor wrongly. I'm the class teacher. My responsibility is to observe, fill in a mid-way report and a final report after a visit from a university tutor.

I'm not sure you are. Schools have (what I've always called) a professional mentor who oversees all students and gives training on whole school subjects and a curriculum mentor who deals with the individual student and fills in forms. They can be the same person, or not. Anyone the student is in lessons with needs to give feedback and do some mentoring.

I certainly agree that a weekly mentor meeting should be held in school time and the school should be covering time for you to do this, even in primary.

Whatever your arrangements, I don't see that it's realistic for all but a superb student to leave at 3.30 no matter what. Students get good by us giving up our time to help them plan and to give feedback, even fantastic students require a lot of extra help at some points. We give up this time because we want to people entering the profession to be competent, and because someone did it for us.

You can't do all the job between 8.30 and 3.30, but you can do pretty much all the work which actually requires you to be physically in school. As I said, I prefer to work in school in the mornings, but if another teacher prefers to work at home once the kids are in bed I don't see the problem. Provided the work is being done, of course.

I guess it really is a thing where secondary is different to primary. The only people I know who have had eyebrows raised at the (lack of) hours they work in school were on capability.

Piggy,

That just isn't how it works in primary - and tbh not how the forms are designed. The main part of the form for feedback (the same size as for narrative observation notes) is about 'summary of discussion with the student'.

You do understand don't you cant that our performance can also be tied to a single class which could be taken by a student?

I agree that snatched conversations aren't ideal bit sometimes something's got to give.

Gluesticks,

Experienced teachers can, and do, leave whenever they like at my school. It is only a student who would have to be there for 30-45 mins at the end of the day, because of the need to verbally breif / debrief with the class teacher.

cant : that will be the forms designed by your MAT/ LA / ITT provider. I work across two phases in ITT and not all forms say that.

Is this a difference between secondary and primary?
When I did my pgce I only had contact with the class teacher, there was no other mentor in the school.

The main part of the form for feedback (the same size as for narrative observation notes) is about 'summary of discussion with the student'.

Same at secondary. If a student didn't attend feedback sessions I gave my time for (and yes, of course, you are flexible if possible) then I would just be completing that form with: "unable to comment as student x declined to receive feedback" and passing the form to their professional mentor.

All this has really started since ITT became so focused on schools. Back in the day, all proper feedback came from the university who visited every so often. It was a very different world. Half the teachers whose classes I took didn't even turn up to the lesson and one used to stay at home