The school I visited for my 1st year week long placement was a small rural primary school with an incorporated nursery that had approximately two dozen pupils split into two classes; P1-3 and P4-7. I worked alongside both teachers and a fellow student throughout the week, interacting with all the pupils of the school and of the nursery as well as interacting with the teachers in the classroom and staffroom.
Strengths
I would say that my main strength is that I am an effective communicator, I can effectively explain to children what their tasks are and what is expected of them throughout these tasks. I can also successfully describe to a child the steps for getting to the correct answer of a question using creative and interactive methods. For example, there was one child; let’s call her Jane. Now jane was stuck on the following mental question 5 – ? = 0, she was struggling to mentally subtract to get to zero. I came up with the idea to use concrete material (pencils) to physically show the calculation needed, the situation went as follows.
Jane – I’m stuck on this question (5 – ? = 0)
Myself – alright, well if I have 5 pencils (holding 5 pencils in my hand) but I don’t want any, how many do you have to take away from me so that I have no pencils.
Jane – I’m not sure
Myself – ok well you take them from me, physically take the pencils out my hand and count as you do so.
Jane – one (takes away 1 pencil), two (takes away another pencil), three (takes away another), four (takes away another), five (takes away the last pencil, looks up and smiles). Five, the answers five.
Myself – well done that was good.
I used this process repeatedly when Jane became stuck on similar questions and also when other students in the class became confused as well.
Area of Most Progress
I would say that my confidence in working with the children, using behavioural management techniques and also interacting with the teachers on a professional level as I had never experienced anything like that before progressed as the week went on. At first I struggled with interacting with the children as I didn’t know them, as in the school I previously did work experience in I knew 90% of the students which made connecting with them particularly easy, but in this case I had no prior knowledge of any of the children which made me less confident in interacting with them. This lack of confidence did however decrease over the course of the placement as I spent more and more time with the children every day and built up trust. I also became more confident in using behavioural management techniques as the week progressed as in the beginning I was reluctant and unsure whether to use them as I am only a student and I am not yet qualified so don’t have the authority to punish bad behaviour. I was however reassured by the teacher that if I saw any bad behaviour I was to deal with it in a manner I saw fit, this usually consisted of me having a quiet word with the misbehaving pupil. Interacting with the teachers on a professional level was quite difficult to get my head around at first because I had never experienced anything like it before, but after a few days I realised that I was viewed as an equal to the teachers and was trusted with personal and sensitive information about the students and was also asked for my opinion on situations and how to handle them.
Area Requiring Progress
I would say that the area that needs the most improvement is my ability to self-reflect on my experiences. At the moment I can reflect and find all the negatives of what do but I really struggle with identifying the positive aspects, this is probably due to a lack of self-confidence and self-worth. This lack of confidence also affects my ability to present in front of my peers. Children that are younger than me and my elders don’t make me nervous at all but when it comes to presenting to a group of people my own age that I don’t know or aren’t comfortable around I get really nervous and sometimes I’m even ill from the stress. So this is one area that I would really like to improve on as it will be relevant to my future career and experiences.
Action Plan
My plan of action is to film myself presenting to groups and watch it back and note down what I did well and what I didn’t do so well, I’ll also do this when I’m in everyday situations such as paying for shopping. This practise in everyday and formal settings will give me the chance to review everything I do right and wrong and should hopefully help me get better at giving myself positive feedback. For the confidence side of presenting I’m going to practise talking in front of a mirror and also build myself up to presenting to groups I am uncomfortable rather than jumping in at the deep in.
