So my first semester back at university is over! 🥳 Here’s what I’ve learnt.
P.S. If you missed it, check out Part 1 (first classes) and Part 2 (placement) of my Postgraduate Teaching Diaries.
People are passionate and supportive
I’ve been really happy to see how passionate the university faculty has been about teaching in general. You would assume and hope that that would be the case, but it’s been nice to see nonetheless. You can see that every tutor and staff member genuinely wants to help you become the most effective educator possible - not just for you, but also for the profession overall.
Tutors have a lot of experience, and that shines through. I guess at one point they were in this same profession - just starting their teaching lives - and they remember what the trepidation is like!
Even from before the semester started, the faculty felt supportive. There are specific contacts for specific issues, including placement, and I’ve really appreciated that feeling of being welcomed into a new and scary world.
Lesson plans really matter
Before starting this semester, I knew conceptually that lesson plans existed, but can’t say I had given them much thought. Now, I can better appreciate the importance of lesson plans, and the amount of thought that goes into them.
Whilst I think it’s true that more experienced teachers are probably quite efficient with their planning, I’ve heard that, for newer teachers, it takes a fair chunk of time. Having needed to put together theoretical lesson plans for a lot of my assessments this semester, I can absolutely see how that would be the case. There is, firstly, quite a lot of specific terminology to get your head around (lesson intention, success criteria, differentiation etc.), but you also need to take care that your lesson plan will be effective for your specific class.
And to do that, you really need to invest time into learning about your class in the first place!
Placement is tiring, but rewarding
I think placement is one of those things that you can’t properly prepare for, because it’s hard to truly know what it will be like until you do it yourself (I spoke about placement a lot in this article, if you’re interested!). Although I had hesitations about starting uni again in general, it was definitely placement that gave me the most headaches before semester started. I feel pretty proud to say that I’ve now completed my first round!
It was definitely a tiring experience, and I’m sure the next three (longer) placements will be, too. But there were little moments over the placement period where I thought, “wow - that’s exactly why teaching is appealing”. I honestly still don’t know exactly if I want to teach for my career, but those little moments were reaffirming, and made me appreciate why I’m doing this.
It’s all about building a network
One of the biggest differences I noticed between this semester and my undergraduate studies was how much more of a clear cohort there is. There’s a lot of overlap in units, and you end up getting to know your peers pretty well over the course of a semester. I know that a lot of undergraduate courses are like that, too - but mine wasn’t.
I think it’s a good thing for a teaching degree. You get to share experiences like placement, and bounce off each other to work out how to, ultimately, become better educators. There are a lot of strategies and resources you can share that will make things easier for the whole cohort in the long run.
At the end of the day, you will most likely be entering the profession at the same time as a lot of your colleagues, and your careers might share similar trajectories. During these two years and after, it will be nice to have a range of people who are probably experiencing similar things, and sharing similar wins/difficulties.
Thanks for coming along for the ride in my first semester! I’m looking forward to resting for a little while, and then doing it all again in Semester 2. 💪
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