Mentoring PGCE student

[y0rkier0se]

I’m after some advice. I’m mentoring a PGCE student at the moment who’s currently on second placement with us. I’m an inexperienced mentor - I was an NQT 2 years ago. She came as a 3 across the board but if I’m honest, some areas are probably 4s. I really want to support her and get her to where she should be, and she says she’s had a bad experience in her first school, but she’s just so slack. She is constantly late sending her planning (think 11pm) when we’ve already agreed to 7pm deadlines, meaning I don’t have time to give feedback allowing her to improve it. She is working as a waitress some evenings & weekends as she says she can’t live on student loans, so I feel sorry for her for that, but ultimately does she need to prioritise teaching? She is only planning one core subject at the moment and everything is late and not great to be honest. When I broach it with her, she makes all the right noises and agrees that she needs to be sending planning on time, but then doesn’t change. I’ve thought about contacting her uni and mentioning that the work on the side seems to be causing a time management issue. WWYD?

I absolutely hated my teaching practices (different system then) and felt very stressed the whole time. I'm not a person who gets stressed easily. I'd cut her some slack and be much more supportive. She'll get there with your help and support.

I never shared my plans in advance with my mentor when I did my PGCE.

Times have changed @Mrskeats possibly because teachers are now under such pressure to produce results for all classes (even KS3 groups set as performance targets) that class teachers can not afford the ‘suck it and see’ approach.

Coupled with parents being increasingly vocal about teaching standards and more willing to complain about what they see as poor teaching (despite not actually being in the lesson).

I’m currently on teacher training, started my 2nd placement 2 weeks ago.

I have always had to hand in a lesson plan in advance, ideally 2 days before the lesson, which I managed for most of my 1st placemebt but then really struggled in the last few weeks... often just the day before or the morning of. That was only 7hrs teaching time too!

I have gone in to my 2nd placement completely terrified that I’m not going to manage a 12hr timetable 😕

Don’t be terrified. You’ll adapt. It does get easier. By next year it won’t take hours to do a plan. And in a few years you’ll be able to multi task rewriting your lesson plan in two minutes because half the kids are on a trip you didn’t know about with simultaneously doing the register and carefully listening for worrying key words in a chat between kids about what Kieran did at the weekend.

This bit is the part that takes the most work. The only time you’ll ever have to do this in this much detail again is when Ofsted turn up.

Ha thanks misssusan it just feels relentless atm!

MissSusanScreams
I agree and the 'suck it and see' staff are the ones who are usually bleating on about any change because it means they can't suck it and see and do what they like. Don't get me wrong, not all changes are good but some staff seem to hark back to the good old days. I think back to my school days it was very much a case of 'if you're hard working and will sort yourself out then you'll do well but if not then it's too much hassle getting you through with a hint of let ks3 do fuck all because it doesn't matter anyway'.

ScafellPoke
Don't worry. You'll grow in confidence and skill in your first couple of years.

A good mentor will know that sometimes trainees get overwhelmed or a bit behind and might be late on something. We are all human.
Equally, a good mentor will help you prioritise and look at your black hole tasks that suck up lots of time but little impact (more arrogant trainees tend to view lesson plans as this which in my experience highlights their naivity and lack of reflective practice). E.g. are you planning activities that take longer to plan than students to do? Do you need to do written feedback every lesson? What if the mentor gave you a comment bank to tick off when marking vs you writing pages? Etc.

Eventually some of the things that have to be overt and take lots of mental space in your training year become stored in a teaching filing cabinet in your brain and you can dip between them with ease. You'll do fine!

I bailed out of teaching after graduating. Because I had bad teaching practices. My first year I had a brilliant report and hadn’t A & A+ for each area. Second year, had a horrible class teacher and a horrible school. Teaching assistants would walk in as I was teaching and start calling the children out she needed whilst also talking to the other children ‘Sarah I seen you shopping on Saturday didn’t I, did you go to the cinema after? What did you watch? Did you enjoy it?’ Etc. My class teacher- any help I asked for, she was always busy, or she would say ‘well shouldn’t you know that by now?’ Comments along those lines. It should have given me a good hint when the student already on placement, had called her university mentor in the day I started because she was having a difficult time. The last day of placement the secretary took me and her aside and apologised for the appalling behaviour of staff towards us. Turned out they were closing the school so staff were being made redundant, my teacher due to her age (a few years from retirement) thought she wouldn’t be employed anywhere, and they all had been told not to tell me and the other student. So basically everything was up in the air for people and me and the other student suffered.

Placement 3, had a class teacher who was also deputy head (think Miss Trunchball- Matilda!). She walked into the staffroom one day, stood at the door and informed me infront of everyone, that although I had excellent classroom management and I rarely shouted, I should shout more so that the children had a little ‘fear’ of me. I was so embarrassed. After school a teacher called me into her classroom where two other teachers were, and they all told me to ignore what she said, that if I could manage a class of year 5’s without shouting I was doing something good. But she made my planning so difficult. If I asked for support because I wasn’t sure if something would work, or if I did not understand something. She would look at me and say ‘I suggest you try and find that out’ (no joking she used it every day without fail!). She would also tear apart a lot of my planning, and would criticise, but never give me constructive feedback.
The funny thing with the one above, is that she had only been a mentor for two years. What she didn’t know was I always took my planning once it was done (and I’d delivered the lesson) to my MIL. Who was an experienced teacher, head teacher, and had been a mentor for donkeys years. It goes without saying she picked up on things I could have done different, mistakes I’d made etc. But she was also confused where my mentor had criticised something and she would say no what you have done is right.
Unfortunately being young and not wanting to rock the boat, I never said anything to my university mentor🤦‍♀️. Funny how when I had my observations by my university, she never said anything about my planning!
So I had 1 good placement and 2 bad. Those last two put me off teaching. I loved the kids. I didn’t mind the workload. They just showed me how bitchy and horrible the school environment could be. On the plus side I did use my teaching experience- to train adults in courses such as safeguarding. The plus plus side, was I was on 45k within a few years of graduating, worked from home anything from 1-5 days a week, and never missed a sports day, concert, parents evening etc. So it didn’t go to waste!

OP Have you thought about giving her the weeks planning on the Friday instead of Monday, so she also has those two days aswell? I appreciate she may have reflections etc to write up, but maybe it could help?
Also you say you meet on the Thursday to discuss how the planning is going. What if you asked her for a piece on the Monday (if you gave it Friday), then another part Tuesday and so on. I know you would be breaking it up for her and she should be taking responsibility for her own planning etc etc. But maybe breaking it down for her, she may see doing one task, easier than a weeks worth in one go. Then maybe giving her the full week for her last week. By which she may have a grip on things? Only a suggestion.

By the way ‘congratulations’ to all of you stil in teaching! From what I read in the media and on forums like this, I’m surprised more teachers aren’t off with work related stress. I honestly don’t know how you manage right now.

Thanks maisy I definately find the lesson planning useful! And often wonder how teachers do without ... esp when planning assessment strategies or differentiation. Don’t teachers have to show that they’re doing this every lesson?

ScafellPoke
You eventually get to the place where teaching a lesson is like having 10 internet tabs open and you move back and forth between them in your head.

That takes time to do well though and is a continual development for all staff because there's always something that can be done better (and to make anything better means spending time on it). When you start to work more on a specific element then that area moves out of autopilot and it takes a bit more deliberate development (of course you do have some staff who think they don't need to get any better but I find ignoring them generally helps as they tend to be drains)

I'm currently doing a PGCE (secondary) and have to have all plans in 24 hours in advance at this placement. There is a little bit of slack e.g. if I'm teaching period 1-4 and then submit a plan for period 3 the next day at lunch, that's seen as ok, but anything after school hours definitely wouldn't be. I usually send any resources for the lesson across as well. We don't have to plan on the standard uni form except for formal observations, though.

I almost think you're being too nice to your student- there are people on my course who've been put on "cause for concern" for less systemic planning issues. The idea is that they are given a clear action plan on how to improve but also the time to do it.

It does sound like she is spending a lot of time in class doing intervention type stuff- at secondary I have a 65% (ish) timetable, plus 1 hour spent on training type stuff with other student teachers and plus a weekly mentor meeting. It sounds like she is spending closer to 80-90% of her time in the classroom, limiting her time to plan while in school with access to school resources etc. I know I would struggle without this, so perhaps 1 week where she is given a lot more time in school to plan, but with it made clear that she gets her plans in on time and to the required standard or she faces some kind of consequence.

What system does the uni have in place if she's failing to meet expectations?

You need to talk to the professional tutor in your school and make sure she/he is involved now. A student at risk of failing and an inexperienced mentor (not a criticism, we all start inexperienced!) is not a good combination.