My first PGCE placement
Photo by : mikeg626
Just before I tell you about my experience I want to add Mike’s explanation about the photo above:
Al Capone was arrested in Philadelphia on a gun charge before he was incarcerated for tax-evasion. For 9 months he called this cell, in Eastern State Penitentiary, home.
The warden and guards at ESP gave special consideration to Mr. Capone during his stay, permitting him to hang artwork, tables and lamps, a velvet duvet, comfortable chair and an expensive radio… Capone enjoyed listening to waltzes after dinner.
……….And back to my story.
I bet Al Capone had a better time in jail than I did on my first PGCE placement. It was a girls’ school that had a vibe not unlike a prison. The staff were wrapped tight. Real anal types. One of the criteria at interview must have been to resemble a cat’s arse-hole. The biggest arse was my supervisor/mentor …… the Head of Science. She was a power crazed, self-opinionated dictator who would have benefitted from a good kicking from the girls. Get the picture - This woman is not on my Christmas card list. In fact I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire. What did this woman do?…….. Read on below.
Photo by : flikr
This so called ‘mentor’ was a real case. From the start, she used her power-base as Head of Department, to try and mess with my mind. She obviously had a plan to knock my confidence and bring me down. For example, she gave me the baddest class she could find for my first ever lesson. Now believe me, before you start teaching a live class , you don’t have much of idea of what to do. In my opinion, the last place to start would be a bottom set of Yr 11 girls who had lost the plot. During an observation of them, I saw that their normal teacher was totally ineffective at dealing with them. This did not boost my confidence about taking the reigns of my first crazy class. But, hell, at that time, I was keen, so I walked straight into a trap!
The first lesson went ok. The girls behaved a bit better than I had seen before. This is the honeymoon period that you get with most classes when they size you up and see what your gonna do. At that time, you’re an unknown quantity so they go cautiously. Also I think there was a novelty value in having a male teacher who they could play up to and then piss off. The novelty soon wore off!
After the lesson, their normal teacher (who, by the way, was totally stressed with teaching) said that I had done quite well. This was nice for me and my confidence went up a little. Later on in the day, I was summoned to the mentor. She gave me this big lecture designed to bring me down to size. She said it was lucky that the girls let me off and how I couldn’t expect to just walk in and do what had taken them years of experience and training to do etc. Reading this back it doesn’t sound too bad but this bitch made my time at the school like hell and I nearly quit the PGCE because of her negative attitude. When you don’t know the rules it’s hard to khow what is what and this woman was clever and subtle in the mind games that she played. She had this ‘thing’ that students from the training college that I came from were inferior to those from the college that she liked, and she had another female trainee from the preferred college there at the same time as me (and in the same subject). This trainee was a nice girl and she ended up feeling very uncomfortable about the mentor setting a competition between us to prove I was shit. I went through the whole placement being compared to Miss x. While she got all the praise, I got slagged off over the smallest thing.
Just before the end of the placement, another student, who I knew, came to visit the school for 1 day before his placement there the next term. The next day after the visit the mental mentor told me that he was a bit confident and that she would soon cut him down to size! The fucking cheek of the woman. To think that she could tell me her plans to do to him exactly what she had done to me. I told my college supervisor and we reported the mentor’s behaviour and, hopefully, no more students from my college went to that school but then ‘money is money’ so there it goes. If your mentor bullies you. Get help. Tell someone because it’s not ok.
Anyway back to my first crazy class. Honeymoon over, the class settled into winding me up. There were some real characters and I found it difficult to keep them in order. A real baptism by fire. Little did I know that I was gonna be dealing with this type of behaviour for the next 8 years.
One of the girls had a drinking problem and would turn up drunk! At the best of times this would be a problem in a school, but I remember her being so pissed she crashed her head on the desk in period 1 ! (9.00 a.m.). That’s got to be a problem. A few times I sent her out to see SMT but nothing was ever done. The school wanted to ignore this end of the challenging behaviour market and, so long as it stayed within the school, it could be brushed under the carpet. Hey, 9.00 am! I thought I was bad. I wonder what she’s doing now? 8 years on anything could of happened.
Despite having a bad time at the school I did get some experience and got to see some “real” teachers doing it. At the time I wasn’t too impressed with the standard of the teaching in that school and, with hindsight now, I can see most of them were a pile of shit. It’s ironic because most of the teachers that I worked with there were convinced that they knew what they were doing so, if I tried anything new (that I had been shown at training college), they would say “Well, in my experience, the best way to teach this would be like this……” which would be their own way! So I was wrong again. Must make mental note to be a clone of my superiors. Even if they have their heads up their asses. Still, there is no arguing with a teacher. Teachers always know best.
After returning to college we had some more theory lessons in the lecture theatre. Talk about giving someone a lecture. Boring academics going on and on - go to the bar instead- it’s much more entertaining and you learn cool stuff to.
After a few weeks of theory we were ready for our second school experiences and I paid a visit to my old school - as a teacher!
Read on about my second school placement………
Photo by: bcmom
Must make mental note to be a clone of my superiors.
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