January | 2019 | My journey as a student teacher

It’s the start of semester 2. There were a couple of timetable glitches which immediately sent me in to panic mode….”How will I work”, “when will I spend time with my own children?”. Luckily my employer has been accommodating and my husband has the flexibility in his working day that he can help with the children and the general household duties.

My New Years resolution is to spend more time with family. We’ve been spending much more time outdoors, at the park. We’ve introduced board game night so that I have time to chat to my children about their week and when my timetable allows I can still attend that karate class or school assembly. I’m already a very organised person but I will have to be a lot more organised in my home life this semester.

My placement is in a smaller school in a village. This terrified me to start with as it is something completely different to what I am used to. However, I have now done some research on the school and I think I will enjoy the small school aspect where the local community has lots of involvement and less children who’s names i have to remember.

So far I have had an animation class. This was fun and different. When I was at school our IT didn’t exist until secondary school. That’s me now showing my age! To have all of these resources at our finger tips is fantastic and I look forward to bringing these lessons in to my own classroom.

I’ve participated in a dance class. First thing on a Friday morning is not what I expected but it wasn’t too hard going and seeing where classes like these can slot in to the Curriculum for Excellence is good.

We’ve had some overviews of language and literacy and professional practice. Going through these lectures has made me think more about what I remember from Primary School and that parts of that I can bring in to my own lessons. It has also helped me to become more reflective.

When I first saw the timetable I wondered why I decided to do this as a mother of two and I am sure this wont be the first or last time I feel like this in the next four years. I just have to keep remembering that it is a very short period of time in the rest of my life and what I can bring to children in my future classes will far outweigh the work I have to put in to my degree.

I will be practicing my lesson plans on my daughter to see how well they go so hopefully that gives me a head start!

Semester 1 went so quickly!

I had 2 main modules to complete. Values and Working Together were the modules.

I was looking forward to my values module as the content interested me. The lectures were sometimes powerful and moving. The lecturers were passionate in what they were talking about and that came across during each lecture. I enjoyed attending these lectures. Learning about different cultures and how others deal with prejudice will definitely come in to my learning throughout my whole degree and career.

Working together was something as a mature student that I was familiar with. I have to do this everyday in my job and last year during college I had to put a presentation together with a group of people for a module with the same name. I wasn’t as panicked this time around as I knew what to expect. As a group of 10 we visited an outside agency who deal with children with Additional Support Needs and their parents. It was great to get information from the perspective of a Speech and Language Therapist and to find out about her day. As a group we jelled well and felt that our presentation flowed well.

These were great starting modules and I will miss my group work and the quieter weeks!

First week back

Year 1, Semester 1