Too much pastoral?

[Lilacroseblue]

I have to be a form tutor. I’m not brilliant at it but doing my best.

However, this is what I’m struggling with.

Firstly there’s competitions every week. A lot of them involve arts / crafts (I’m not an art teacher!) and they are taken very seriously.

We also have to interview and record every child once a term.

We get one hour a week in which we are supposed to do all this but man it’s hard - anyone got something similar?

Hand over control of the competitions to the kids.

The interviews sound onerous but at least you are given time to do it in - that’s very unusual!

The one hour isn’t for the interviews sorry it’s for all pastoral stuff, the competitions and behaviour and so on.

You can’t really give it to the kids - how?

The kids are actually capable of organising themselves. And if they don’t, and lose the competitions, then it’s on them. What input do you need to give?

When are you meant to do the interviews?

How many dc in the class and what age? Just write the challenge on the board and give them the resources to crack on while to take individuals to the side for interviews. Give key roles to the dc - challenge captain to build leadership skills.

I think pastoral care is extremely important so you need to learn fast how to manage it.

I am a tutor, we have to do the same kind of things. All of this is to be done in tutor time, we are not given any additional time for this

I don’t really care if we win or not but if it’s crap (ie obviously no one has even tried!) or incomplete then I get it in the neck!

Problem is giraffe they aren’t, not when it comes to working in large groups anyway. They need organising and help to do this.

mother pastoral care doesn’t equal competitions does it?

The hour a week is ‘additional’ PPA, ie beyond the minimal 3 hours a week (I think?)

You need to stop personally caring about getting it in the neck for poor efforts and feed that back to your tutor group instead. Make them take responsibility and make it clear to your superiors that you are ‘building up the leadership skills’ of your group by ‘allowing them to take ownership’. If your superiors say that it should be your work instead of the tutor group, then ask them what exactly the point of the exercise is!