The last few weeks in University had been building up to this; the first real taste of life as a teacher. Professional Practice.
Having volunteered in one form entry schools, the first thing that struck me was the sheer size. I had walked past this school many times whilst I volunteered up the road but had never paid that much attention before.
Once over the initial shock, I sat there on my first day nervously outside the business managers office, trying to make some kind of awkward small talk with a seemingly much calmer first-year trainee. Despite being at the same university and on the same course, we had never met before much to the school’s disbelief, (“No, seriously? You’re lying, really?”). This was the dream placement for her, her old primary school, a place where she had volunteered, she knew most of the staff, I was brand new.
After a whistle-stop tour with the business manager, whilst my brain tried to quickly retain all the information and memorize what seemed like a maze, I was sent to meet my class.
I was just sort of encouraged to drop in, it was in the middle of a maths lesson. I remember the children chanting in centimetres as they went from their tables to the carpet, but I’d be lying if I said that I remembered much else from that lesson, it was a bit of a blur.
After the lesson the teacher and three teaching assistants introduced themselves, thankfully they seemed really nice and somewhat relaxed, what a relief!
I was handed my first important document for the school’s maths scheme, this was where we were going to start, it would be (at this point) the ‘dreaded’ maths meeting. Though I had a chance to familiarize myself with the scheme for year 3, I didn’t teach anything for the first week. I spent that week mostly finding my way around the school, getting used to the structure of the day, adjusting my ears to the very bizarre sounding bell that rang at the end of every allotted period and the sound of the classroom phone constantly ringing to everyone’s dismay; as well as observing the lessons, trying to work out the dynamics of my class, and most importantly navigating my way around the buildings, which I would spend many a day flitting between to the photocopier and back.
On Wednesday, I was introduced to my mentor alongside my fellow trainee in our first group weekly meeting alongside four PGCEs. I listened as the PGCEs discussed their busy schedules with our mentor until she stopped and turned to us, the perhaps naive first years. “So did your class teachers ask you to do anything for next week?” I replied, “Well he did mention something about possibly doing one or two maths meetings.” “Great! so let’s throw you both in the deep end then, you can do all the maths meetings for next week.” Oh dear.
As it turns out maths meetings aren’t as scary or alien as you’d think. A fifteen-minute whole class recap of the termly topics with usually a maths song thrown in and a bit of calendar maths for good measure. I might even miss them when I’m at another school!
Becoming a Primary School Teacher 