Not all bad

So often when people talk about teacher training, they talk about how hard, how stressful, and how much work it is. I often find myself telling others (and myself) the same. The reality it is that it is hard, it is a lot of work, and it can sometimes be stressful... but I'm also really enjoying it.

There have been a few days when I've questioned whether this is what I really want to do. The fact that I've wanted it for so long is acting as a double-edged sword: being so close to my goal after all these years is freaking me out, but of course this is what I want. I can't imagine myself being happy doing anything else.

I've really been blessed. My group at uni is full of great people who get on really well. I've been placed in a dream class in an outstanding school linked with other outstanding schools with a very kind and encouraging supervisor and two very helpful class teachers (and there's a bump on a log in a hole at the bottom of the sea). I've been getting positive feedback on all my work. I'm being handed all sorts of unexpected opportunities and training. I'm learning every day. And you know what? So far I've been completely capable of managing the workload.

There'll be days when I'll feel differently, and on those days I hope I remember to look back at this.

PS - After all that stressing over the numeracy test, I decided to just get it over and done with. I rebooked for last Saturday and passed! Phew. I still can't finish my school's gold medal times table challenge in the allotted time, but I'm getting closer. 

Two months down, eight more to go

I know, I know, I've been awfully badly behaved. Every time I think of something I'd like to write about, I then decide that I'm too busy, too tired, or just couldn't be bothered. That, my friends, is the true nature of a PGCE student. There is so much to do and to think about that it's hard to want to do or think about anything else.

That's not fair... I've been keeping my social life going as much as I can. Actually, my social life has improved. Between the new people I'm meeting on my course and other people who are suddenly going, "Where are you? We miss you!" I've been spending a fair chunk of my time on the circuit. But I have a feeling that won't be able to continue much longer.

So, what are all these things I've been doing and thinking about? Most uni days, we're in class from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. The timetable is dynamic and unpredictable and half the time we'll be on our way to class and realise we don't know where we're going. Sometimes we have a bit of "time off," but this is invariably used to  catch up on work. There is a lot of work: readings and directed tasks coming out the wazoo. We don't always know what these are, so we spend a lot of time talking to each other, trying to figure it out.

Technically, there are 3 modules: Professional Practice, Learning & Teaching, and Specialism. The latter two are M level (we get Masters credits for them) and the first one is Honours level, but don't let this deceive you. Professional Practice is by far the biggest and most monstrous of them all. It includes everything about "being a teacher" (behaviour management, planning, safeguarding, differentiation, etc, etc), all the core and foundation subjects (English, maths, science, ICT, geography, art & design, the list goes on...), and all of our school experience. We've barely started Learning & Teaching so I don't know much about it, but I imagine it's fairly self-explanatory. And then we've each chosen a specialism that we spend a measly 8 days on. Mine is French. Due to a combination of factors (including the fact that teaching Modern Foreign Languages from Year 3 upwards is going to become mandatory in 2014), they're essentially grooming us to be MFL Coordinators. Forget about becoming Newly Qualified Teachers... we already have to be thinking about a leadership role. It's kind of cool, but was also a bit of a shock the first day.

Then there's school experience. A few weeks into the course, we took off for a two week observation period. I was lucky enough to be placed in a really lovely school not too far from where I live, but the variability in placements is huge. Others were sent up to 1.5 hours away and have come back with some pretty shocking stories. I thought the observation period would be boring but it really wasn't. I got stuck in with everything right away, got to know some of the children and the staff, picked up a lot of great ideas, and was amazed by how much progress the children made over even that small chunk of time. Truly inspiring.

On Monday, I'm going back to the same school for 4 more weeks. I'm feeling a little bit apprehensive after spending the last little while back in the cocoon of university, but I know it'll be amazing once I get there. This time, I need to plan mini-lessons and teach small groups of children, paying close attention to their progression. I also need to start getting involved with bits of the whole class teaching, mainly so that the children see me as a teacher and not just a helper.

I'll try and keep you updated on how that goes.

[Edit]: I forgot to mention there are two national skills tests we need to pass in order to gain our qualification: literacy and numeracy. I passed my literacy test last week (yay!), but numeracy is coming up in December and I'm scared. My maths skills have improved in leaps and bounds since I started this course (who knew maths can be fun?!) but the timed mental section still freaks me out.

Identity Crisis

Day two of my PGCE course (day one of actual coursework) and already I feel assured I'm in the right place. My training provider seems to be focused on the very same things that are important to me.

For my interview, I had to speak about a current issue facing primary education in the UK. Most of the news stories at the time were about secondary level education so I took the approach of talking about a problem I'd observed in schools: the dissonance between what a lot of teachers would like to be doing/what current educational research suggests (child-centred, interactive, and creative/play-based learning) and the results and procedures expected of them by various authorities (national exams, Ofsted, LEAs, school policies, etc). I said it would help if training providers offered guidance on how to reconcile the two. Thinking this was perhaps a rather unorthodox suggestion, I was amazed when this came up in class today. Already. It's practically a Cinderella story.

Today was all about identity in various forms and in different contexts; personal identity, student identity, student teacher identity, and transitional identity (the identity we're aiming for as future teachers). We talked about how they all interact, where the tensions and similarities lie, and about how it's important to be reflective because who we are will affect how we perceive and react to different situations. We also talked about how student teachers tend to think of their personal skills and attributes as being the most important characteristics for becoming a good teacher, when actually we need to be thinking about job-based skills as well.

I like that this course is already challenging us to think, reflect, share, and engage with one another. A couple of people commented that they're not used to reflecting about themselves because their degrees were very academic and focused on analysing other people's work. I'm sure there will be elements of that too, but they seem very keen that we all create our own learning journeys (I hope you like cheese), and that we take the research on board in a very personal way. Which is good. Because that's exactly how I like to roll.

Effective teaching and learning

I've started my pre-course reading. The first topic I'm tackling is "Effective teaching and learning," which apparently:

• Equips learners for life in its broadest sense
• Engages with valued forms of knowledge
• Recognises the importance of prior experience and learning
• Requires the teacher to scaffold learning
• Needs assessment to be congruent with learning
• Promotes the active engagement of the learner
• Fosters both individual and social processes and outcomes
• Depends on teacher learning
• Recognises the significance of informal learning
• Demands consistent policy frameworks with support for teaching and learning as their primary focus

The article then goes on to break all ten of those points down in wordy paragraphs. Good points, to be sure, but a little too analytical for me. Despite being a bit of a nerd about the topic, it was enough to make my head want to explode. Effective teaching and learning, for me, is relevant and engaging. That's it.

What knowledge/skills/attributes do I want my students to gain or develop? What relevant knowledge/skills/attributes do they already possess? What's the most effective way of bridging the gap between point B and point A?

Relevant: This word has a couple of meanings in this context. The material being learned should build on something they already know and it should be of some use or interest to them. Ideally, this use or interest should be made apparent.

Engaging: I don't necessarily mean this in the sense of "OMG every lesson must be FUN!" I do believe in having fun with learning whenever possible, but fun is a tool that can be misused and abused and sometimes misses the point. When I say engaging, I mean that students should engage with the material. They should use it, manipulate it, apply it, question it, and test it. This makes the learning stick, it makes it useful to them in a variety of contexts, and it also develops their ability to think and to learn. 

The rest of that stuff about valued forms of knowledge and congruent assessment et al. seems kind of implied, but perhaps I'm taking it for granted. What do you think? What does effective teaching and learning involve from your point of view?

As good as new

The time has come to reinvent this blog. It began as a peephole into the life of a transplanted Canadian learning what it meant to work as a TA in inner London. It's been nearly 3 years now, and while I continue to learn and discover new things, I am well and truly settled. Britain is as much my home (if not more) as Canada ever was and I only have 6 weeks left of working as a TA. Soon, I will be learning what it means to be a trainee teacher.

I am beyond thrilled to have been accepted by one of the top teacher training providers in the world. I've wanted to be a teacher since I was 13 years old and now that I'm coming up to 29, it's definitely time. I feel as well-prepared as I could ever possibly be. I am also terrified. 

I know that the year ahead is going to be a challenge. I know that I'm going to have to fight my inner procrastinator with everything I have if I'm going to survive. I know that my current sense of confidence is likely to be crushed, then hopefully rebuilt. I know there's a very real possibility that one or both of my placement schools will make my life a living hell. But I was born to teach, and that's what I will do. I will rise from the ashes. I've gotten this far, and I will not let anything or anyone (including myself) take that away from me.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like this blog to turn into a place for me to wrap my head around ideas, trials, and tribulations. If you're not into that sort of thing, I won't be offended if you stop reading. Hopefully there are others out there who can benefit from and/or add to my experiences. 

So on that note... welcome to a day in the trenches.

I can't believe I forgot to post this...

After waiting years of waiting and months of stressing...



I'm going to be a qualified teacher!

Thinking of turning this into a "life of a PGCE student" blog come September, since I can't seem to find that sort of information anywhere (other than "prepare to be buried in work for the next year").

In the meantime, I'm doing my happy dance.

Understanding Autism

I've been working with children who have Autism for about 2.5 years now. Through the process, I've interacted with various specialists, conducted my own research, and (of course) learned a lot from the children themselves. Mainly what I've learned is that Autism is incredibly complex, and there are a lot of variations within it. It means that working with any given child generally involves a lot of trial and error, and just because you have experience working with one child (or many) does not mean you will automatically know how to work with the next. Although I eventually gained something of an intuitive understanding of what Autism means after enough exposure to a number of very different Autistic children, I still struggled to lay it out in a way that could be explained to others.

Then, a couple of months ago, the school where I'm currently working sent me on a course about Autism. I learned about The Triad of Impairments (or, as some people prefer to call it, The Triad of Differences). Suddenly it was laid out in a way that made sense to me.


We talk a lot about the Autistic spectrum, but it's not (as I had imagined) a straightforward 2D spectrum. It's very much 3D.

Consider the graphic above.

Social & Emotional Understanding refers to the ability to understand social behaviour. Imagination & Flexibility of Thought refers to the ability to think and behave flexibly, and impacts on the development of restricted, obsessional, or repetitive activities or interests and difficulties in developing play skills. Social Communication & Language means the ability to understand and use non-verbal and verbal communication.

Each of these areas has its own spectrum, and any given individual can fall anywhere along each of them. Each of these areas also affects each of the other areas. Sensory sensitivities (again complex in their own right) overlap and affect them all. And underlying everything is a spectrum of cognitive ability. Some people imagine Autistics as Idiot Savants with one highly specialised skill. The truth is that this only occurs in about 10% of cases, and special skills can pop up anywhere along the cognitive spectrum. Some individuals may also have motor difficulties.

When we talk about "high functioning" Autism, what we actually mean is average to above average cognitive ability. A person with "high functioning" Autism may still find some or all of the other areas on the graph particularly difficult or distressing (note an interesting comment on Reddit by someone with Autism who calls high functioning Autism a misnomer). When we refer to someone with Aspergers, we are talking about someone with good verbal communication skills (though not necessarily good with non-verbal communication).

Having said all that, there's one more thing I think is important to mention. Why is there a movement toward calling this a Triad of Differences rather than Impairments? There's an argument that the Autistic brain is not impaired; it simply works differently. I'd love to do another blog post about that another day, but for now I'll leave you with this beautiful message from Jim Sinclair:

Being autistic does not mean being inhuman. But it does mean being alien. It means that what is normal for other people is not normal for me, and what is normal for me is not normal for other people. In some ways I am terribly ill-equipped to survive in this world, like an extraterrestrial stranded without an orientation manual.

But my personhood is intact. My selfhood is undamaged. I find great value and meaning in my life, and I have no wish to be cured of being myself. If you would help me, don't try to change me to fit your world. Don't try to confine me to some tiny part of the world that you can change to fit me. Grant me the dignity of meeting me on my own terms, recognise that we are equally alien to each other, that my ways of being are not merely damaged versions of yours. Question your assumptions. Define your terms. Work with me to build more bridges between us.

I hope that if you ever meet someone with Autism, you will use this information as a source of understanding and a guide for building bridges. Every child I've met has been a beautiful person, and every one of them has been my teacher as much as I've been theirs.

Still here

I know it's been ages since I've posted here. Hopefully I'll get back to it at some point. I have a trip to Rome I should document, some thoughts about Autism I want to discuss, and a bunch of life stuff that's worth mentioning.

But all I want to say for now is that sometimes life takes you in unexpected directions. And sometimes it's pretty awesome.

Travels through the holy land

Ok, I promised a post about Israel. It's long, long overdue but here it is.

Israel is, in a word, amazing. When people talk about Israel these days, the conversation tends to focus around the conflicts. But when I was there, what I saw was beauty, warmth, diversity, and awe-inspiring history.

For the first three days of my trip, we stayed in Haifa, which is a city on the northern coast. From there, we were able to venture out to Akko (aka Acre) and Caesarea. We mostly saw a lot of cool old stuff and gorgeous coastline.

Akko:





Caesarea:



Haifa:



The Baha'i Gardens gave me a sense of tranquillity I have rarely felt before.


On the afternoon of the 3rd day, we returned to my friends' homebase in Jerusalem. My favourite part of Jerusalem (and one of the highlights of my entire trip) was Hezekiah's water tunnel in the City of David.


The story goes that in 8th century BC, Jerusalem was attacked by the Assyrian army. In an effort to protect the city, King Hezekiah ordered a 1750 foot tunnel system be dug through the mountain to divert the water supply. Not only an amazing feat, but a lot of fun to walk through!

Temple Mount--the holiest place on Earth for three different major religions--was pretty amazing too.

The Western wall and the Dome of the Rock.


Women placing their prayers in the Western Wall.


And from there, the view of the Mount of Olives and the rest of Jerusalem was just stunning.



The next day we headed out to the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve.



I got myself positively covered in silt when I tried (and failed) to climb up a hill.


So we went to clean and cool ourselves off in the Dead Sea (another big highlight of the trip).



That same night, if you can believe it, we headed to Tel Aviv for a dance. I'd gone dancing in Jerusalem the night before and had a great time, but the scene in Tel Aviv took me by surprise. It's a lot bigger and the level is a lot higher than I would have guessed. Not to mention, the people were very friendly.

The next day was a quiet one. We wandered through the shops and markets in Jerusalem and prepared ourselves for the Sabbath. I really enjoyed the experience. There's nothing like peace, quiet, and good food shared between good friends at the end of an eventful week.

And then it was time for me to go. I wasn't ready to at all; it felt like I needed at least another week. Don't be surprised if I go back again soon.

But for now... the next trip I have booked is Rome at the start of December. I can't wait for more adventuring.

I love London

By now, you will have heard about (or experienced first-hand) the senseless violence of the UK Riots. You will probably also have heard about the thousands of people who rallied to clean up our communities. We've seen both the worst and the best in people over the last few days.

Here's some more of the best...


I live very close to Peckham. If you heard about the Peckham bus fire, that was within spitting distance of my home. It's a neighbourhood that often gets a bad rap because it's full of folks who are unemployed and--I hate to say it but--black. And yet when I went out for a walk the morning after the riot, the streets had already been cleaned, the vandalised shops were open for business, and there was a good feeling in the air. There was definitely a sense of "keep calm and carry on," but more than that there was a sense of community.

It wasn't long before the "I love Peckham" project sprang up. A couple of girls have taken it upon themselves to spend their days handing out post-it notes and marker pens to the locals and sticking up the community's thoughts for the world to see. When I stopped by yesterday, I saw a man I remembered from photos someone else had taken. He was there to give the girls a bouquet of flowers.

It just goes to show that even when this city is at its lowest point, it's still full of heart. In a city this big, where it's easy to go through each day without any meaningful interaction with those around us, sometimes it takes a tragedy to remind us of that. I love Peckham and I love London. I feel so very lucky to live here.