I can't believe it's now six months since I completed the DTLLS course. What's happened since then?
We all passed the course and received our DTLLS qualification - most of us went to a jolly degree ceremony in October at the Cathedral and were handed our scrolls by a very charming Stephen Fry.
Hugh is teaching Psychology at a sixth form college - working hard but thoroughly enjoying it. Bethany got a job teaching Design part-time at another sixth form college, which she enjoys, but is currently on a break for three months in Thailand. Asif is working for a local education organisation teaching English and Citizenship; and Kelly was teaching Hairdressing in another FE College, but hated it and has resigned.
Sarah dropped out of the course after the first term and problems with her teaching placement. Natalie has moved house and gone back to being a Weight Watchers Leader. Big Jay has become the Business Manager of a local Management Training company, which he is well suited to and enjoys. Dan, who had health problems all through the course and still has, is applying for jobs - not necessarily in teaching.
And me - did I go into teaching?
No. I did look for jobs last summer, but there was nothing at our college; from a starting point of saying they wanted to employ all of us post-qualification, the college ended up making swingeing cuts from early this year, made 10% of all staff redundant and have not been able to offer any of us teaching work. I didn't find any other teaching jobs in Creative Writing, Journalism or even Literacy (all off campus courses were axed at our college, including the Sure Start Literacy course I taught on - terrible shame!). I did sign up with a supply teaching agency, but bottled out of the first day I was offered - admittedly at 7am that morning and I had no childcare in place. Thankfully, I haven't been offered any more!
Although the college wasn't able to offer me any teaching work, I have delivered training workshops to staff there in my previous area of expertise, Work-Life Balance.
Having started the DTLLS course thinking of myself as a writing failure, in July I found a publisher for the self help book I had written the year before and it has just come out today. Much of my time in the last few months has been taken up with the publication and publicity process - and building a coaching and training business around The Real Secret. Next week I will be delivering my first workshops, "An Introduction to The Real Secret" to college staff during Learning Week - all my slots are over-subscribed already, so I can only hope I deliver the goods. Although I'm not strictly "teaching", the input from the DTLLS course has made a difference to the way I do training, coaching and deliver workshops.
Our tutor, Jen, has told me she's coming to one session - so I'll have to try not to recall the observations on my teaching she did! Mike, our first tutor, went to work at another FE college which has subsequently had to make cuts and he is now developing computer games and apps - we're talking about one for The Real Secret.
Thanks for reading this blog - if you want to find out who I am, go and look at:
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or, best of all, buy yourself a copy of The Real Secret on Amazon
Showing posts with label Literacy Core Curriculum Training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literacy Core Curriculum Training. Show all posts
10 December 2010
23 September 2009
No Placement in Place
An email to my course tutors and Director of the School of Lifelong Learning
Hi Mike, Scott and Pearl,
I had my first meeting with my subject mentor, Laura, yesterday; and sat in on one of her Literacy classes today, which was an interesting and very useful experience. The discussion I had with Laura, though, raised two issues which are worrying me somewhat.
1. My teaching placement.
I had assumed, when I was told I had "a place on the FT DTLLS programme with a placement in Literacy in the School of Lifelong Learning", that a set of classes enabling me to cover my required 150 hours of teaching had been earmarked, and that my mentor would be aware of this and able to tell me what my teaching timetable would be and who I needed to contact.
It seems that this isn't the case; that there is no "placement" in place and that it may be my responsiblity to sort this out. This feels like a rather precarious situation to find myself in and a stressor I could do without while getting to grips with the intensive learning and demanding course work of the first few weeks of DiTTLS.
2. Literacy Core Curriculum Training
As the relevant people were aware, I have a degree in English and Drama but no previous experience in teaching Literacy. Laura suggested that in order to do so, I might need to do a two-day course in Literacy Core Curriculum Training - which I would have to source myself, as there isn't one at our college, and would have to be paid for. However, Laura did also wonder whether the Functional Skills/Minimum Core element of DiTLLS would give me enough Literacy background to cover this. I can't see when I can fit two days of an external course in before Christmas and certainly can't afford to fund another set of fees. How have previous Literacy placements worked?
Does anyone else have any thoughts about this?
All the best
Literata
Hi Mike, Scott and Pearl,
I had my first meeting with my subject mentor, Laura, yesterday; and sat in on one of her Literacy classes today, which was an interesting and very useful experience. The discussion I had with Laura, though, raised two issues which are worrying me somewhat.
1. My teaching placement.
I had assumed, when I was told I had "a place on the FT DTLLS programme with a placement in Literacy in the School of Lifelong Learning", that a set of classes enabling me to cover my required 150 hours of teaching had been earmarked, and that my mentor would be aware of this and able to tell me what my teaching timetable would be and who I needed to contact.
It seems that this isn't the case; that there is no "placement" in place and that it may be my responsiblity to sort this out. This feels like a rather precarious situation to find myself in and a stressor I could do without while getting to grips with the intensive learning and demanding course work of the first few weeks of DiTTLS.
2. Literacy Core Curriculum Training
As the relevant people were aware, I have a degree in English and Drama but no previous experience in teaching Literacy. Laura suggested that in order to do so, I might need to do a two-day course in Literacy Core Curriculum Training - which I would have to source myself, as there isn't one at our college, and would have to be paid for. However, Laura did also wonder whether the Functional Skills/Minimum Core element of DiTLLS would give me enough Literacy background to cover this. I can't see when I can fit two days of an external course in before Christmas and certainly can't afford to fund another set of fees. How have previous Literacy placements worked?
Does anyone else have any thoughts about this?
All the best
Literata
22 September 2009
Week Two: Stressing
It's Tuesday of Week 2 and I'm feeling exhausted again. I should be writing one of the short essays that make up Task 3 (of Module 1). I could pick "Current Legislative Requirements (only 150 - 200 words), but we're having a tutorial on that tomorrow and, I think "Embedding Functional Skills" (300 - 400 words). We got all the info on "Evaluation of Assessment Methods" today, but I can't face 300 - 400 words on that tonight; or, indeed, "Methods of Feedback" - which is only 200 - 300 words. But there is a short (150 - 250 words) one on "Record Keeping" which doesn't seem too demanding.... I'll see how I feel when I finish this entry in my Reflective Journal.
One of the reasons I feel tired is the pressure of the Microteach coming up a week on Friday. It's both exciting me and stressing me out. I keep having ideas - and they wake me up at 5am, buzzing round my head, but not usefully or coherently. I'd decided to do something that will help everyone with essay writing, so punctuation and grammar orientated, and spent yesterday evening creating a little survey to see which areas might be most popular. But then in the car coming into college I heard this man on Radio 4 talking about the need for debating in state schools and thought - A Debate! Structure the Microteach as a mini debate, which would involve reading, writing, speaking and listening, assessing and responding....
But I gave out the survey anyway, and all the girls seem to be really excited about me teaching them basic punctuation stuff. Even Jay, the English specialist and novelist, asked for an explanation of when to use "past" and "passed". He knows all the terms - "homophones" in this case - but not, apparently, every last thing about them. So, ok, it's going to be punctuation. Lesson plans, learning outcomes, resources, a video, powerpoint - feels like it's going to take weeks to prepare! And some people (the girls!) seem to have frighteningly high expectations of me.
The other stress/exhaustion factor is that I met my Subject Specialist Mentor today, Laura. She' a very nice and interesting woman, about ten years younger than me, and we had a good discussion. But she thinks I need to do a two-day course on Literacy Core Curriculum Training - which I would have to source myself as they don't do it within the college, and possibly even pay for - though my "provider" (the college) should do. So that's a worry, especially as I can't see many free two day slots before Christmas. The other worry is that Laura doesn't see it as her job to sort out my teaching placement. She only teaches three literacy courses a week for college (one of which is off-campus anyway) - and even if I were to take over all three of them for the next two terms, which she's hardly going to want, it would only just be enough to make up my required 150 hours. So I have to find some other courses taught by someone else to work with. She's given me another name, but I'll have to talk about it in my Professional Practice tutorial tomorrow.
I'm sure it will get sorted out, but it feels like a mess and that the responsibility is on my shoulders. And just as I'd got to grips with the weekly timetable and workload, there's a new and unforseen extra load. It's probably the least impressive part of the organisation of the DiTLLS course. None of our mentors seem to know what they're supposed to be doing and the placements are completely unco-ordinated. I suppose I'm ahead of the game in that I've got and met a mentor - which is more than Sarah has. But still, the uncertainty of it is unhelpful when there's so much else going on simply in terms of course content and assignments.
It's now 9.45pm. I don't think I can bear to start on Record Keeping now, so I might just cut my losses and go to bed.
Over and out....
One of the reasons I feel tired is the pressure of the Microteach coming up a week on Friday. It's both exciting me and stressing me out. I keep having ideas - and they wake me up at 5am, buzzing round my head, but not usefully or coherently. I'd decided to do something that will help everyone with essay writing, so punctuation and grammar orientated, and spent yesterday evening creating a little survey to see which areas might be most popular. But then in the car coming into college I heard this man on Radio 4 talking about the need for debating in state schools and thought - A Debate! Structure the Microteach as a mini debate, which would involve reading, writing, speaking and listening, assessing and responding....
But I gave out the survey anyway, and all the girls seem to be really excited about me teaching them basic punctuation stuff. Even Jay, the English specialist and novelist, asked for an explanation of when to use "past" and "passed". He knows all the terms - "homophones" in this case - but not, apparently, every last thing about them. So, ok, it's going to be punctuation. Lesson plans, learning outcomes, resources, a video, powerpoint - feels like it's going to take weeks to prepare! And some people (the girls!) seem to have frighteningly high expectations of me.
The other stress/exhaustion factor is that I met my Subject Specialist Mentor today, Laura. She' a very nice and interesting woman, about ten years younger than me, and we had a good discussion. But she thinks I need to do a two-day course on Literacy Core Curriculum Training - which I would have to source myself as they don't do it within the college, and possibly even pay for - though my "provider" (the college) should do. So that's a worry, especially as I can't see many free two day slots before Christmas. The other worry is that Laura doesn't see it as her job to sort out my teaching placement. She only teaches three literacy courses a week for college (one of which is off-campus anyway) - and even if I were to take over all three of them for the next two terms, which she's hardly going to want, it would only just be enough to make up my required 150 hours. So I have to find some other courses taught by someone else to work with. She's given me another name, but I'll have to talk about it in my Professional Practice tutorial tomorrow.
I'm sure it will get sorted out, but it feels like a mess and that the responsibility is on my shoulders. And just as I'd got to grips with the weekly timetable and workload, there's a new and unforseen extra load. It's probably the least impressive part of the organisation of the DiTLLS course. None of our mentors seem to know what they're supposed to be doing and the placements are completely unco-ordinated. I suppose I'm ahead of the game in that I've got and met a mentor - which is more than Sarah has. But still, the uncertainty of it is unhelpful when there's so much else going on simply in terms of course content and assignments.
It's now 9.45pm. I don't think I can bear to start on Record Keeping now, so I might just cut my losses and go to bed.
Over and out....
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