Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA on Pexels.com The Mentor’s View Sonya is a new mentor. She has been shadowing a colleague in the role for the first time this academic year and has really enjoyed taking a more active role with the ITT student. She has appreciated how thinking like a mentor has sharpened her own … Continue reading Seeking a Second Opinion: Feeling undermined by your ITT mentee
Photo by Yevgeniya Fedorova on Pexels.com I am not a hill walker. I love visiting the Lake District, but I would much rather a nice walk on the flat around a lake (perhaps with a quick stop at a tea shop) than battle up a hill which quickly turns into a mountain. Why? Because I … Continue reading Feeling despondent? Why beginning teachers need to keep on climbing
Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com The start of the lesson hooked pupils into the learning beautifully and Tom, the beginning teacher, valiantly moves the class onto the first independent task. Within minutes the lesson, which promised so much, has been overtaken by a ripple of off task behaviour. By 5 minutes in only the 3 most compliant pupils have achieved anything even vaguely resembling a response to part … Continue reading Targetting Tom’s Transitions: Moving smoothly between phases within a lesson
Photo by Vojtech Okenka on Pexels.com I love baking and all things cake. So, having recently written about what mentors might learn from Strictly, I now turn my attention to what beginning/ early career teachers and their mentors might learn from Bake Off and the nature of the three baking challenges included in each episode. … Continue reading Showstopper Lessons: What Beginning Teachers and their Mentors can learn from GBBO.
Photo by Marko Zirdum on Pexels.com Watching Strictly Come Dancing this past weekend I was struck by the way the judges gave feedback to the contestants in week 1 of the competition. Unsurprisingly my mind turned to the beginning teachers just starting out on their own journey from novice to competent over the course of … Continue reading Strictly Come Teaching: Giving feedback to novices
Not that long ago, to my shame, I found that 15 minutes had passed as I scoured the web for the ‘perfect’ picture of an iceberg to illustrate a point about bilingualism in the classroom. Why did I do this? Did I imagine that my adult audience would struggle with the concept of an iceberg? … Continue reading Perfectionism and the honourable art of being good enough
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com During her first placement Tina proved to be a good teacher in the making. She has sound ideas about what she wants to achieve in the classroom, is organised and a great team player. She was quick out of the blocks at the start of the course and really … Continue reading Teflon Tina: How to support a beginning teacher struggling to act on advice
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com The pandemic has demonstrated the strength and versatility of cooperation and collaboration in our ITE partnership. This has been shown through the support and flexibility of our school partners joining with us to train beginning teachers, and through the ways in which the University PGCE has worked to develop … Continue reading An Ode to our History ITE Mentors: A journey into training to be a teacher virtually, Part 3
Photo by Vlad Cheu021ban on Pexels.com “Why aren’t they just able to cope? They need to be more resilient.” UK National lockdown in March 2020 threw all of us into a land of unknowns. In education, carefully crafted spiralling curricula was suddenly disrupted and at every level new ways had to be found to fulfil … Continue reading Lessons in resilience for early career teachers
During the SHP Virtual Conference in July, I got into a Twitter conversation with a beginning teacher who, following Christine Counsell’s presentation on ‘The what, why and how of broadening historical content at KS3’, commented that he felt like a teaching toddler: This feeling of not having done enough or learnt enough or not … Continue reading Discovering Lego: Growing as an early career teacher
I remember the moment I was first asked to be a NQT mentor. The news was delivered as a fait accompli, and my heart sank. It wasn't that I didn't want to do it, I did, but I had just gained my first middle leader promotion and was in the middle of a MA. I … Continue reading Why bother mentoring a beginning teacher? What’s in it for me?
Around this time last year I wrote about how beginning teachers could make the most of their final weeks as PGCE students in the classroom. This year, they do not have classrooms, they only have the virtual PGCE programme to prepare them for NQT in the absence of critical practical experience. I asserted previously that … Continue reading Supporting your new NQT colleague to THRIVE amidst a global pandemic
Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels.com The last month has brought changes to our world that none of us could have envisaged when we set off in September on the endeavour of training beginning teachers. Our minds were preoccupied with the usual concerns – how do we move students through the plateau, how do … Continue reading Becoming a teacher, virtually
We're approaching that time in the ITE year when our students prepare to move to a new school setting for their second teaching practice. Having just settled into their placement school, having just found their feet as beginning teachers, we uproot them and transplant them into a brand new context, with different children, staff team, … Continue reading A shape-sorter understanding: Why mentees find changing teaching placements so hard
Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com Wanda had started to struggle. It was small things at first, a partially completed lesson plan with the promise that the full version would follow and a set of books she’d taken home for marking accidently left in her kitchen on the day they were due to be returned. Finally, … Continue reading Worrying about Wanda: Supporting your mentee’s well-being and workload
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Edward was a quiet, some might say timid, chap. When he started his teacher training it was hard to imagine him standing in front of a hardened year 8 class, let alone 'managing' them during a wet and windy Friday period 5. Edward was great when working with pupils one … Continue reading Creation not Emulation: Developing teacher persona
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com One of our history ITE mentors likes to talk about the way she and I often perform a ‘pincer movement’ on the beginning teachers we share. This sounds much more aggressive than the reality! Our ‘pincer movement’ most often involves both of us praising the student for the same achievement … Continue reading The Power of Partnership in Initial Teacher Education
Photo by Nikolay Draganov on Pexels.com "Come on then, what makes someone a good PGCE student?", I was asked by a friend during the summer break. The faces of those successful beginning teachers I've supported over the past few years flashed through my mind. How do you answer that question? All of those people successful, … Continue reading Optimistic, Observant and Open: What makes a successful PGCE/ ITE student?
As we pop into school in the next two weeks for results days, it's worth giving a thought to how we can support new colleagues (whether NQTs or more experienced teachers) joining our departments and schools in the new academic year. How can effective mentoring and induction support them and benefit your department?
Photo by Scott Webb on Pexels.com At the start of the PGCE I use a recurring image with my students of a house under construction. I set out that our aim during the ITE year is to dig and lay the foundations upon which their teaching career (the ‘house’) will be built. This process will … Continue reading Building your house: Teaching in the Long Term
We are entering that often tricky period in the ITE year when most students know if they have done enough to meet the teacher standards and are very much in the final furlong with the finish line in view. They now face a decision - do they gallop to the finish line, driving forward, attacking … Continue reading Galloping into the final furlong: Supporting your mentee to make the most of their final weeks as a training teacher
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Quinton is a good questioner. On one level he is able to present the pupils with a task and draw out the salient historical facts through his questioning feedback, ensuring the pupils ‘get it’. He feels confident in his ability to do this, and yet his mentor and university tutor … Continue reading Quinton’s Questioning: Unleashing historical discussion in your mentee’s lessons
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com Fernando is a new mentor. He is enthusiastic and keen to be supportive and to work with the university based tutor. He is also realistic, and has taken time to understand his mentee and their needs and to become the ‘critical friend’ discussed previously in another post: Matey Mentor . … Continue reading A Tale of Two Mentors: Mentoring with perspective
Considering how we approach reference writing for those at the beginning of their teaching career
Photo by freestocks.org on Pexels.com What are the conditions required for a beginning teacher to thrive in their training year? Since writing my blog on ‘Bewildered Beryl’, I have been pondering upon the idea that ‘the student teacher needs to develop quickly a feeling of friendship with, and trust in, the mentor’, the key assertion … Continue reading Matey Mentor? Creating the right environment for our beginning teachers
The first of a series looking at the different 'types' of teacher training students we may encounter, and how teacher educators can seek to support them in their development
A cup of tea and a listening ear Standing outside my son’s primary classroom this week, I observed his teacher deep in conversation over a cup of tea with a new member of staff. When the door to the classroom opened just a few minutes later, this young woman stood (with the class teacher hovering … Continue reading Helping a new PGCE Mentee to start well
Becoming a History Teacher 