School Placement Block One Reflection - October 2023

Overall, I felt I had a mostly positive experience in my first teaching block this year. Being in an all-boys school was a completely different challenge to my previous experience in coed schools, and I faced new experiences both positive and negative. I found that the boys tend to be more open to answering / asking questions, and oral discussion / evaluation benefits these students a lot more than written evaluations, and it benefits the classroom as a whole as it leads to extremely interesting and well-versed discussions, that are extremely relevant and provide plenty of opportunities for group & peer learning. However, Through my first block I experienced for the first time that many of the students in this school lack an individual natural aesthetic / ability to solve problems visually, and I found this quite frustrating at first. 

As a teacher, it is my job to facilitate learning in the classroom, and not get so ‘bogged down’ in the overall final resolutions of the students - this was a large learning curve, and was a very difficult personal issue to overcome in the first block. I found that keeping a personal diary outside of college / UoL reflections allowed me to share all of my thoughts immediately after classes, and reading through these ‘unfiltered’ passages allowed me to identify persistent issues that impacted how I was feeling in the classroom. I also need to develop a little more confidence in my teaching abilities - during the classes I feel great, but afterwards I tend to ‘nit-pick’ the classes. I am continuously learning to leave issues in the past and look forward, using a “what, so What, Now what?’ approach.

Reflecting in the light of theory has also helped benefit me largely - this was advice I received after my first visit, and since implementing it into my post-class reflections, I have found that I am able to make links between articles I am reading, and behaviours / possible solutions I am seeing in the classroom. I also have to largely thank my host teacher, as she has been an excellent person to question, lean on, and bounce ideas off of throughout my placement. I found the beginning of placement rocky - it is difficult to enter a classroom ans take over from such a well loved teacher, but as I have been in the school a month now, I find that almost all students have warmed up to me (and I am even beginning to receive presents from my Transition Year student’s cooking classes!). I hope that entering my second block of placement, after a week of rest, that I will enter with more confidence in my capabilities, and the potential to make my second block even better than the first. After receiving positive feedback from my first visit, I hope that my positive qualities can carry over to the second block, and I can work with my SP tutor to problem solve any issues I have run into in the past.

Teaching a particularly challenging group of students has proved a significant challenge, but a welcome one. It is a great thing to experience this as a student teacher, and it will better prepare me for beginning my teaching career. My host teacher explained the situation with a particular class grouping, and even confessed that she has had some tears and plenty of confusion after some classes with this group - at first, this frightened me, and I wondered if I would be capable of educating these students to the standard they deserved. My host teacher was excellent, and allowed me to sound thousands of ideas off of her. I tried many methods of differentiation & classroom management, and I received really positive feedback from my HT and SNA, who were amazed at the difference in the students during this scheme versus the previous ones. This was great to hear - I had only observed this group once previously, so I wasn’t fully sure of their behaviour beforehand. In my head, these classes weren’t amazing as it was my first time teaching a group like this, and I was comparing them to my previous placement classes, but these comments from the staff made me feel very positive. 

I am going to present my UoL from this group at the SP review, to seek advice from my peers about how I could further support this group through CBA1.

I felt that I was much more able to involve myself in the life of the school during this placement block than I have been previously - I joined the staff book club, hosted a bake sale to raise funds for my TY scheme, Brought students on 3 tours (Newgrange, Dublin Zoo and a Local Skatepark), and I assisted my HT with many different events, from marist week to student council events, to a Halloween Hangout for first year students. I also got the chance to participate in the Moyle Park TPO scheme (Teacher-Peer Observation) where I paired up with a Business Teacher, and a PmE History & Geography teacher. We observed each other, and gave each other feedback on our lessons. It was a really positive experience, and I received plenty of helpful advice from a more experienced teacher, and also got to give my opinions on their lessons, which I felt they really valued which was a nice experience to have. Working with another student teacher in the school was also a great experience, as we shared how we both construct our lesson plans, powerpoints, handouts etc. and It was great to see this not only from another student teacher, but from the perspective of a different subject department.