For Module 5 (which should have been submitted at the end of the first semester, but had to be delayed to accommodate the late arrangements of placements and mentors and therefore teaching practice), we were asked to: "Critically reflect on your learning from the first semester of the DTLLS course and identify areas for development including gaps within your subject specialist knowledge to be addressed in Semester Two. Ensure you reflect on the importance of collaboration with your mentor and peers that support your professional practice. Draw on evidence from your reflective journal and feedback received through the observation process." Although I've just handed it in, I may as well post it in my Reflective Journal...
I entered the FT DTLLS course after a significantly longer period outside a formal learning environment and with proportionally greater life experience than any other student. This had positive and negative aspects: I could draw on a range of professional experience, including writing for various media and management training and consultancy, which supported my subject specialism and some aspects of teaching; on the other hand I had predominantly worked as a freelance or independent practitioner, was largely self-taught, and thus unused to a culture in which professional practice is rigorously monitored and assessed against prescribed and somewhat inflexible criteria.
Perhaps it was an error on my part to suggest at initial interview that, as someone with a degree in English and writing credentials, I could teach any related subject from Adult Literacy to English A Level for my placement. Having been told that Creative Arts placements were already taken, I did not pursue Creative Writing as my preferred subject specialism; I wanted to get onto the course. Perhaps it also reflects a certain lack of knowledge within the DTLLS team that I was offered a placement teaching Literacy – certainly my mentor, when I was first assigned to her, expressed doubts as to my (or anyone else’s) capacity to deliver the Adult Literacy curriculum without training. She suggested at once that I should take an additional course to familiarise me with the content and assessment criteria. I was at first panicked by the thought of any additional workload, but when I attended the two-day, ACER Introduction to Literacy course in February, I found it immensely useful and it has supported my teaching in this, and indeed the other areas of Numeracy and Creative Writing.
My first experience of formal teaching was the Module 1 Microteach assignment, when, after a pre-teach survey, I chose to teach “Uses of the Semi-colon” to the DTLLS peer group. I was able to apply some of the theoretical teaching we had received to that point on Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS). This module focused on the basic requirements for teaching and the role and responsibilities of a teacher, including legislation, functional skills, feedback, assessment and record keeping. As I had spent a number of years researching work-life balance issues, my first instinct was to take a survey of the DTLLS class to ascertain what area of literacy they would find most useful, the results of which I was able to use to demonstrate numeracy functional skills.
The build up to delivering the microteach was immensely stressful: the volume of new information from full-time classes, structuring the half-hour lesson bearing in mind the theory and practice of that teaching and simultaneously writing the series of short essays for the rest of the Module 1 assignment also coincided with the first meeting with my mentor. As I have noted above, she was not convinced of my ability to teach Adult Literacy and, moreover, had only three Literacy classes per week which she wasn’t entirely happy to give over to me. However, we instituted a regular weekly meeting leading up to my placement (which resolved into two Literacy classes and one Numeracy class), after which she gave me regular and ongoing feedback and support about my teaching in terms of specialist subject matter and professional practice during and after lessons as well in weekly planning meetings.
I also found very valuable the tutorials I had at this point with the course tutor, without whose input I would have attempted to introduce far too much information into an over-complex microteach; the video of my lesson through which I was able to assess my own performance; and the formal and informal feedback from my peers. I reflected on all of this at some length in my Reflective Journal.
As we moved into Module 2 (Initial Assessment and Functional Skills) at the same time as Module 5 (Professional Practice), I found myself enjoying the academic work, but less so the small amounts of teaching. Conscious incompetence is not a mode I find comfortable to work in, and once again, the in-class microteach on aspects of numeracy was stressful. The collaborative side – we worked in groups of three – was positive, though and for one day, two microteach groups worked together and rehearsed with each other. Again, tutorials with the course tutor and another tutor were highly supportive when I was finding the time pressures of DTLLS work and running a home with two small children hard to reconcile – though my mentor seemed unimpressed by my issues and suggested I might consider doing the DTLLS course in two years rather than one. I had no desire to do this, but in terms of the initial assessment component of our taught course, I was not the only FT DTLLS student to think we had not been given sufficient information about either the intensity and front-loaded structure of the course, or the uncertainty of the mentors and placements assignation.
For Module 3 our assignment was to prepare a case study of an assessment strategy, while in class we analysed and evaluated learning and teaching theories relating to different forms of assessment and influences on assessment. Although I was engaged by the issues of formative and summative assessment, the fact that I had not yet started my teaching placement meant that I wasn’t able to develop a real case study – though my mentor provided some material for the assignment. There was some confrontation, though, when I showed her a scheme of learning of hers which I had reworked (as I was not yet in a position to create one of my own) to submit as an appendix to an assignment. She felt that this could be viewed as plagiarism and took this up with one or more of the DTLLS course tutors.
Module 4, Communication and Supporting Students in the Learning Environment, included a fairly demanding, two part assignment. The first required us to create an innovative resource that demonstrated inclusivity and diversity – and, contentiously, emerging technology – and present it to the DTLLS peer group and tutor(s). I was pleased with my resource, which was a Free Writing activity based on the work of James W Pennebaker, though its only relation to emerging technology was that it could be used either in a hard copy or Word-based format. The feedback from peers and tutors was insightful and supportive, though again I was pressed for time to complete this part of the assignment by the deadline and as a result did not present with as much confidence or expertise as I could have.
The second part of the assignment was a so-called “professional discussion” – although it merely involved presenting to a sole tutor - about communication, behaviour management and barriers to learning. It took place at the end of term, following a significant incident in the teaching programme which adversely affected all the FT DTLLS students. The main course tutor was dismissed and, whatever the reasons and justification, we as students felt that we were not properly informed nor was there a robust plan or personnel to replace him or support us. There was a hiatus in teaching and pastoral support during an important transition time from full-time learning to teaching placement.
I enjoyed preparing and delivering the professional discussion. I was able to draw on my brief experience of teaching placement in an Adult Literacy course based at a Sure Start centre, a Get On Adult Literacy class of very mixed ability and an Adult Numeracy class in which many students had learning and physical differences. I was also able to draw on my professional background in child development, parenting and self-help related psychology. I was pleased to achieve a Distinction in this assignment.
By the end of the first semester I had delivered two microteaches and one solo lesson for a Literacy class. Feedback from tutors and my mentor was positive about my subject specialist knowledge, authoritative delivery, good relationship with students, use of humour, planning and resources. Points for development included directed and inclusive questioning and setting clearer timeframes for each activity. Activities which offer more differentiation and extension tasks were also aspects I needed to work on. To consolidate my knowledge of the Adult Literacy Core Curriculum, I had booked myself onto a two day course to take place in February on Teaching the Adult Literacy Curriculum.
Showing posts with label subject specialist mentor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label subject specialist mentor. Show all posts
7 February 2010
Some solo flying
Monday Surestart Literacy - the snow was on the retreat and we had a more or less full complement of students plus one new female student. Laura had asked me to teach the main body of the plenary session (while she inducted the new student and did her diagnostic assessment) and provide the resources. I found a number of crossword games - with ible/able ent/ant ending-words and Laura had given me a "Dictionary Challenge" game to copy and use as the main part of the session.
Both exercises went well, with Mark taking part with his crossword clues scaffolded ....
Oh dear - I started that post about a month ago and never finished it. Nor have I managed to write or reflect on anything between then and now - except mentally, of course.
In fact, now I remember it, that lesson went rather well, with the crosswords holding attention and the Dictionary Challenge team game getting quite raucous as the two sides became competitive and I was trying to keep the scores reasonably even across the slightly mis-matched ability teams. It was a good way for me to work up a better relationship with this slightly reserved group, and Laura seemed happy enough with the way it had gone. I re-ran this lesson with the Wednesday Get On Literacy Class, which was also fine but completely different in tone and response. Perhaps because the class is not such a coherent group as the Surestarts, and because the ability range is more diverse, it wasn't such a sparky activity - but it still produced good learning outcomes and the class enjoyed the activity.
I didn't see it coming when the next week's Surestart Literacy lesson turned into a low point in my teaching placement. I'd prepared a pretty full lesson on word and sentence level activities, including more crosswords, homophone, homonym and synonym stuff which segued into word types. I'd followed a lesson plan and set of resources that Laura had sugegsted and I thought for at least the first hour that it was going well, differentiation was working, structure was tight. Laura was leaving me to it while working through the results of a test or diagnostic with an individual student.
I guess I was pushing them quite hard on word types - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc - but most were there, with the exception of a new student who had started the previous week and although fine with most aspects of the work, said she just didn't get nouns and verbs, had never understood them... And I could see Laura watching me handle this with what looked to me like an expression of great anxiety on her face. Before the end of the lesson, she came back in, took over, told the new student she'd bring her a special worksheet next week... and made me feel somewhat foolish and incompetent, unintentionally, I'm sure.
Her feedback after they'd left was a little terse (well, it must be incredibly frustrating as a mentor to see your class taken over by amateur incompetence and your students not getting the high level of teaching you yourself would have delivered) and about overloading students with too much information, too many intensive activities and not leaving enough processing time and "fun" activities. I felt it must have been a complete disaster, but Laura did say that the students had probably not felt there was a problem at all.
Still, when she went on to suggest subject matter, resources and activities for next week's lesson - including finding a range of newspaper and magazine ads, and laminating them... I fell apart. Ridiculous, but I've never laminated anything in my life, I didn't know where or how to do it -- suddenly it felt as if teaching was simply beyond me and I'd never make the grade. Poor Laura, she was already running late for her next class, but she sat down to try and put the pieces of me back together. It didn't entirely help when she said that her main worry was my commitment -- I'm committed alright, just more pressed for time than most other full time DTLLS students, with two small children and a household to run alongside a post-graduate diploma course and 150 hours of teaching practice!
It was probably the nearest I've got to pulling out of the whole course - which in fact is what Sarah has done, by the way. She finally complained to the Vice Principal about the fiasco of her placement and mentor and got some action, but then fell out with the mentor, who thought that she should be ready to take on teaching some small parts of the class after a couple of weeks observing. Well, that's was about the timescale within which everyone else started bits of teaching, but Sarah apparently refused and has now left for good. Shame, she was going to be a good teacher, and hopefully still will be.
Anyway, that was a diversion. By the next day I had pulled myself together and after the Tuesday numeracy lesson, went to Laura's office to learn how to laminate. A revelation: so simple - I loved it! I might even buy my own small laminator, apparently you can get them for about £25! And the ads I'd found look splendidly professional as resources for next week. If I can learn to laminate, I'm sure I'll get the hang of this teaching thing before too long.
Both exercises went well, with Mark taking part with his crossword clues scaffolded ....
Oh dear - I started that post about a month ago and never finished it. Nor have I managed to write or reflect on anything between then and now - except mentally, of course.
In fact, now I remember it, that lesson went rather well, with the crosswords holding attention and the Dictionary Challenge team game getting quite raucous as the two sides became competitive and I was trying to keep the scores reasonably even across the slightly mis-matched ability teams. It was a good way for me to work up a better relationship with this slightly reserved group, and Laura seemed happy enough with the way it had gone. I re-ran this lesson with the Wednesday Get On Literacy Class, which was also fine but completely different in tone and response. Perhaps because the class is not such a coherent group as the Surestarts, and because the ability range is more diverse, it wasn't such a sparky activity - but it still produced good learning outcomes and the class enjoyed the activity.
I didn't see it coming when the next week's Surestart Literacy lesson turned into a low point in my teaching placement. I'd prepared a pretty full lesson on word and sentence level activities, including more crosswords, homophone, homonym and synonym stuff which segued into word types. I'd followed a lesson plan and set of resources that Laura had sugegsted and I thought for at least the first hour that it was going well, differentiation was working, structure was tight. Laura was leaving me to it while working through the results of a test or diagnostic with an individual student.
I guess I was pushing them quite hard on word types - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs etc - but most were there, with the exception of a new student who had started the previous week and although fine with most aspects of the work, said she just didn't get nouns and verbs, had never understood them... And I could see Laura watching me handle this with what looked to me like an expression of great anxiety on her face. Before the end of the lesson, she came back in, took over, told the new student she'd bring her a special worksheet next week... and made me feel somewhat foolish and incompetent, unintentionally, I'm sure.
Her feedback after they'd left was a little terse (well, it must be incredibly frustrating as a mentor to see your class taken over by amateur incompetence and your students not getting the high level of teaching you yourself would have delivered) and about overloading students with too much information, too many intensive activities and not leaving enough processing time and "fun" activities. I felt it must have been a complete disaster, but Laura did say that the students had probably not felt there was a problem at all.
Still, when she went on to suggest subject matter, resources and activities for next week's lesson - including finding a range of newspaper and magazine ads, and laminating them... I fell apart. Ridiculous, but I've never laminated anything in my life, I didn't know where or how to do it -- suddenly it felt as if teaching was simply beyond me and I'd never make the grade. Poor Laura, she was already running late for her next class, but she sat down to try and put the pieces of me back together. It didn't entirely help when she said that her main worry was my commitment -- I'm committed alright, just more pressed for time than most other full time DTLLS students, with two small children and a household to run alongside a post-graduate diploma course and 150 hours of teaching practice!
It was probably the nearest I've got to pulling out of the whole course - which in fact is what Sarah has done, by the way. She finally complained to the Vice Principal about the fiasco of her placement and mentor and got some action, but then fell out with the mentor, who thought that she should be ready to take on teaching some small parts of the class after a couple of weeks observing. Well, that's was about the timescale within which everyone else started bits of teaching, but Sarah apparently refused and has now left for good. Shame, she was going to be a good teacher, and hopefully still will be.
Anyway, that was a diversion. By the next day I had pulled myself together and after the Tuesday numeracy lesson, went to Laura's office to learn how to laminate. A revelation: so simple - I loved it! I might even buy my own small laminator, apparently you can get them for about £25! And the ads I'd found look splendidly professional as resources for next week. If I can learn to laminate, I'm sure I'll get the hang of this teaching thing before too long.
14 November 2009
DTLLS Class Song
I wrote this in a moment of madness/creativity in half an hour last weekend - who knows why?
To be sung to the tune of ABBA's "Dancing Queen"
We can learn, we can teach; distinction, merit or pass.
Take it down, feed it back – diggin’ the DTTLS Class.
Thursday night and the essay’s due;
Will our theories in use ring true?
Have we referenced our sources; Gravells, Petty, Race -
Got Bloom and Schon in place?
Anybody could mark our work,
Can’t assume they’ll accept our quirks.
Add a plug for Vygostsky; Maslow motivates -
We’re in child ego state,
Let’s differentiate!
We are the DTTLS Class, SMART of aim and truly diverse;
DTTLS Class – reflective journals all getting worse?
We can learn, we can teach; distinction, merit or pass:
See those guys, watch those girls diggin’ the DTTLS Class.
We're assessing and feeding back,
Formative, summative – got the knack!
Struggling with our mentors – if there’s one in reach –
We’ve done our microteach;
My ILP’s in breach...
We are the DTLLS Class, SMART of aim and truly diverse;
DTLLS Class – trying hard not to swear or curse.
We can learn, we can teach; distinction, merit or pass;
Write that SOL, cloze that gap; diggin’ the DTLLS Class.
To be sung to the tune of ABBA's "Dancing Queen"
We can learn, we can teach; distinction, merit or pass.
Take it down, feed it back – diggin’ the DTTLS Class.
Thursday night and the essay’s due;
Will our theories in use ring true?
Have we referenced our sources; Gravells, Petty, Race -
Got Bloom and Schon in place?
Anybody could mark our work,
Can’t assume they’ll accept our quirks.
Add a plug for Vygostsky; Maslow motivates -
We’re in child ego state,
Let’s differentiate!
We are the DTTLS Class, SMART of aim and truly diverse;
DTTLS Class – reflective journals all getting worse?
We can learn, we can teach; distinction, merit or pass:
See those guys, watch those girls diggin’ the DTTLS Class.
We're assessing and feeding back,
Formative, summative – got the knack!
Struggling with our mentors – if there’s one in reach –
We’ve done our microteach;
My ILP’s in breach...
We are the DTLLS Class, SMART of aim and truly diverse;
DTLLS Class – trying hard not to swear or curse.
We can learn, we can teach; distinction, merit or pass;
Write that SOL, cloze that gap; diggin’ the DTLLS Class.
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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