Diary of a Trainee Teacher

One of this blog’s regular readers has her PGCE interview today. Good luck Willowfae!

I recently came across an interesting post in a parents forum, which I think raises questions about the nature of our education system. These words were attributed to Bill Gates, when he was speaking to a group of High School pupils, although I believe this is now known to be untrue. They are, nonetheless, interesting:

As in jumping through them – there are so many!!!!!

Since I got home yesterday I’ve filled in a CRB check form, as I have to be vetted and paid £36 for the privilege, completed a health questionnaire and a formal acceptance form. I’ve also begun my application form for funding. I’ve done it online, and it needs checking, but it’s basically complete. 

All there is to do now is to get contact with a provider of a French booster course… it would be easier if they actually responded to my emails. 

Right, now that the elation of being successful is over with it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of moving to a new part of the country, acquiring funding and meeting the conditions of my offer.

It’s too early to make arrangements to move at the moment, though my Other Half has applied for a graduate job so do cross your fingers for him too won’t you? I’ve started looking at rental properties, and I’m heartened to find that we’ll be able to afford a much nicer place than we have at the moment on the same money.

As for meeting the conditions of my offer… That would be French. I’ve started a Language Centre course, which will help and I’ve asked about a subject knowledge booster course in the summer. Hopefully I’ll get some information about that soon. Otherwise my parents are bringing my old books from A Level when they come to visit in a week or so, perhaps I’ll find something useful in there. 

The big issue is the Student Loan Company. I have plenty of experience of applying for loans, and a similar amount of experience of getting well and truly fed up with them! I must admit I’ve been putting off beginning the application process, it’s a highly annoying and long winded process and I’m not looking forward to it. I suppose I’d better get on with it soon though. As an independent student and a MFL student I should be better off than most students, getting the full loan, help with fees and a £9000 bursary. As it’s tax free I won’t be much worse off than I am at the moment. Got to jump through some hoops to get it though. I’ll keep you updated. 

After checking GTTR track for the umpteenth time it finally changed – I’m in! I have a conditional offer to do a PGCE teaching German with French at the University of Leeds. I assume the condition is that I improve my French to something that resembles A level standard as discussed at the interview!

I’m very excited and can’t seem to settle. I feel like a great big weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The people at work think I’m a loony, but I really don’t care.

I’m starting to worry about my sanity. I spent all Saturday morning stressing about the post – there was none – and today I’m checking the online tracking system compulsively (approximately every 30 minutes, sometimes less). I know that there’s still time, but I’m feeling kind of aimless, like I don’t know what to do with myself. Once I have an offer there’s loads to do, student loan, house hunting, not to mention learning my second language but until an offer materialises I simply have to wait.

I’m reminded of a song we used to sing at school, usually when the teacher was late or the bus was slow leaving for a school trip. Perhaps you’ll remember it, went to the tune of ‘Oh Come All ye Faithful’….

Anyway, as there’s still nothing to report I thought I’d just share that with you. I know it’s still only early and I can’t expect a response yet, but it’s hard sitting at work and thinking that the letter might come in the post while I’m out. 

Well, I’m back from the scary interview… it could have been better, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse! The interview started with a comprehension exercise about boys/girls learning styles in a library of childrens’ fiction (it was very hard not to get distracted). The actual interview itself was quite pleasant, the interviewers were friendly and relaxed, and they asked me questions about my experiences, hobbies, degree etc. The German section was quite good, we chatted about my year abroad, what I did and how I found it. The French section was almost suicidally bad! I stumbled over every word. This was followed by a discussion now how I could best improve my French and a comment was made that any offer would be dependent my improving my obviously awful french. This is something I would be willing to do… I hope I made that sufficiently clear. After my question about 6th form teaching was answered I was sent back to the library to write my mini-essays in French and German. They were probably a bit rushed, as I needed to leave for the train, but the French was infinitely better than my speaking, while still not being that good. Then I came home, complete with grouching and complaining about the British rail system and the horrible weather.

I’ve been told that it’ll take 2-3 weeks to hear back, but a fellow MFL PGCE applicant (a virtual acquaintance from the tes forums) to the same uni heard of her acceptance within a week (3 working days) so I have hopes of hearing soon. 

Thank you for all the messages of support. I promise to post the result as soon as I have one. 

Right, I’m off! Wish me luck. For those who voted for the suit you can see that you won!

Continuing in my quest to get up to date I’ve done a little research into changes to the MFL GCSE exams. The BBC had this to say. This the Guardian’s take on the subject and this is the main Times Education Supplement Forum thread on this topic.

The main gist is that they will be removing the dreaded oral exam – where you trot out your pre prepared and learned by heart presentation on a subject of your choice and then do a role play with your classroom teacher – and replacing it with ongoing teacher assessment. The general feeling is that these exams are too stressful. The main benefit of this is that this could be considered a more realistic assessment of speaking ability, the pupils would be speaking more ‘off-the-cuff’ rather than in rigorously practised sentences. It also removes the element of ‘a bad day’ or ‘nervous blank’ and will help to ensure that the really able and hard working students are appropriately rewarded. 

However, this also means that there will be very little in the way of accountability for the outcome of the exam – the oral exam is at least recorded so it can be considered by a third party. More opportunity for schools to fiddle the system to make sure that they get good exam results for the purposes of league tables. Also, by removing this ’stressful’ exam they are doing the pupils a disservice. The oral exam is a rare chance to test your ability to perform at the correct time – this is a very useful skill out in the real world. 

Personally I think the oral exams could do with shaking up a bit – we do need to test pupils ability to think on the spot, rather than their ability to learn by heart, and despite the opportunities for cheating I do think that this is a better way to ensure that the students who deserve the As are the ones who receive them than the current system. I would still add an ‘interview’ or some other one on one method of assessment, for which the student could prepare, as a way of giving the student who doesn’t like to speak out in front of the class a chance to shine, and as a way to inject a little of that ‘real life stress’ feeling into their language learning. It can be stressful to be in a foreign country trying to get a point across, and we need to make sure they’re prepared for that.