Been Too Long

Nearly a month, I see, since I lasted "reflected" here - I'm supposed to be doing so at least once a week so might lose marks for this in some formative assessment! The fact is, I've been finding it increasingly hard to keep up with the demands of the DTLLS course.
The week after I last posted, my old life made a bit of a come back and I had a morning off co-presenting  a radio show, an evening talk to a writers' group, a day in London judging a work-life balance competition - and it was my birthday. The week after that was half term - a good time to get assignments and extra studying done for most of my co-students, but for me impossible to do any work at all with children also on half term, visits to both sets of grandparents planned, another book talk to give and my eldset son to stay for the weekend. In some ways it was very healthy to step out of  DTLLS-world for a time, and realise that the course is not the be all and end all of my existence.
Last week, though, when we came back to college after the break, it all seemed to close around me again and with an assignment which I hadn't even started to be handed in on Friday, I went into a bit of a meltdown. My mentor, Laura, suggested I might go part-time (it's possible to do the DTLLS course in two years rather than one, but you don't get the bursary for that, and the financial imperative of finding actual teaching work asap after finishing makes that a non starter for me); Scott was very sympathetic in my tutorial with him, ordered me to take some time out and asked whether I had ever been told how much work the course would involve - given that my only working times outside college are the Thursday we have off and after 9pm in the evening. The answer was no - nothing about the course was explicit until I was actually enrolled on it. Mike gave me a two week extension, but with that as a backstop position, I just worked long nights and got the "Assessment Strategy" and accompanying essay in on time - last Friday.
This week I've had little chance to recover from the exhaustion that produced as we all had to give another microteach on Wednesday. Working in groups of three, we had to research and prepare a 45-minute Functional Skills Numeracy lesson. I was working with Hugh and Sarah on "Fractions, Decimals and Percentages and Eequivalences Between Them", with my section being the introduction then Fractions and Decimals. It was a rush, but Hugh is great on creating Powerpoints, we came up with some good activities and it went ok, if no more than that. There was a lot of material to incorporate (normally that would have been covered in several sessions), so some of it was certainly a bit rushed.
Developmental Feedback from Scott was: not enough differentiation, more directed questions and time activities so learners focus and teachers can time-manage better. All quite fair enough and will be taken on board. Positives were good communication, eye contact, clarity of info - in Powerpoint and on the whiteboard, creative activities.
The minute that was over, I had to start working on the next assignment - a "Resource" for my adult literacy learners and a 15-minute presentation of same, which is to be given to tutors and the class next Wednesday. This means I have several more long nights before then looming, though I'm rather pleased with what I've put together - a simple writing template to combine cognitive and affective understanding (Bloom's Taxonomy) based on James W. Pennebaker's work on Expressive Writing - which can be used to consolidate/explore learning or to manage challenging behaviour or incidents. Very Vygotsky - not just his Zone of Proximal Learning stuff, but also his theories on how children learn language. I have the PowerPoint and structure of the presentation to put together before next Wednesday. 
Then, before the end of term we have to prepare a 15-minute Professional Discussion (ie viva voce examination) on "Positive Behaviour, Communication and Barriers to Learning" - and start work on Module 7's assignment, a reasonably major piece of research: only 2,500 words for the report, but with demanding criteria.
Talking of criteria, we got our Module 1 assignments back at the beginning of this week. I got Merits for everything - microteach, reflection, essays.... I was quite happy with the grade and feedback for the teaching, but disappointed with the essay grades - and lack of constructive feedback about why I hadn't achieved a Distinction (which Mike had been quite clear I had on the drafts I submitted to him) or how I could do so in future. The fact is, as he too had succumbed to work-overload, Mike didn't mark our work and almost everyone was disappointed by their grades and feedback. As I got ticks, "good", "excellent" or other positive remarks on almost all paras, and notes consisted of a few minor quibbles about word choices, in the main, I - along with several others - have resubmitted mine for independent assessment or at least clarification. In one sense the grades don't matter, as the end result is either Pass or Fail - no grade for the DTLLS course - but the work all goes into your Professional Portfolio, and it was intensely demotivating to find I had the same grade as some people who don't write as well as me, or have the same academic background. Having helped Nat shape and structure her essays, I know for sure that mine were a grade above, at least. What use is it to know that I got a "strong" merit, when merits are not differentiated within the grading system? 
At the end of this week we had a role play session on providing each other with a badly behaved class to see what sort of behaviour management we could achieve. My session came towards the end, by which time the group had become semi-hysterical with acting out pregnant chavs, violent teenagers, recalcitrant leaners, over-smart students and a range of other disruptive scenarios for each other. My class had two people smoking out of the window and one drawing rude pix on the whiteboard. I can't claim to have managed them remotely effectively, devolving instantly into "controlling parent" ego state (Transactional Analysis), yet failing to control. It wasn't very lifelike, but did make me think about my own habits: one of which is I never give of my best in fake situations, rehearsals, hypothetical scenarios - but reality and real people bring out the best in me and I can surprise myself by how effectively I can deal with difficult situations in real life. Also, I don't get much challenging behaviour when I'm teaching or chairing or managing groups, perhaps because I like and understand people and on the whole they like me.
The week after next, class work reduces to one day a week and teaching practice starts in earnest - 3 x 3-hour classes a week for me, probably two in Literacy and one in Numeracy - following the discussion about my placement and which Laura has been very helpful in sorting out. I'll be starting by observing all classes, then taking small sections with Laura present, then when I get to the stage of being in charge of an hour's worth of class, she'll leave me to it... then at some stage next term I shall be taking all three classes full time and madly writing lesson plans, finding resources, creating Powerpoints, understanding where everyone is in terms of assessment and learning outcomes.
In the mean time I'd better give myself some SMART(ish) objectives:
Teaching style: Don't: get freaked by outlandish, hypothetical situations; get competitive or undermined in class/group situations.
Do: ask direct questions for inclusion and to check learning; be clearer about instructions for activities; think about differentiation in all activities
Assignments: Don't: panic about time - it will all get done in the end and Merit is perfectly acceptable, given I have so much less time than most people to do the work.
Do: start work on the Professional Discussion as soon as Wednesday's presentation is over, and write at least the Proposal for the Research Project before the end of this term (check it with Mike).