Page 63: ECT 1 Complete - How my training prepared me for my first year of teaching?
The next instalment of my ECT 1 completed series is exploring and reflecting on how my teacher training prepared me for my first year of teaching and reflecting on what aspects of the role I have managed well.
Personally, I think my training prepared me very well for my first year of teaching, particularly because I am not only teaching in the same school as one of my placements, but the same year group, the same classroom and the same phase leader that I had when I was a student. This meant that I had an in depth understanding of how the school worked and the day to day expectations of a teacher here. There are also elements of being a teacher that you do not get the chance/experience to do as a student. I was able to establish these and pick them up quickly as I progressed throughout the year, supported by the fact that I had formed good professional working relationships with lots of different people across the school. Having these connections and knowledge of the whole school staff allowed me to feel comfortable and confident to get and ask for help whenever I needed to. An example of this was when we were first base lining our new Nursery cohort. I had never taught in Nursery at this stage, so I did not know the exact expectation in regard to the areas of learning in that point of a child's learning journey. I was able to draw on the expertise from experienced staff members to support my understanding, and then I was then able to complete this task confidently.
Through all of my training from school placements, university content and personal research, I understood how integral it was to form strong relationships within a team. When starting in September, I knew I was joining a team of fantastic teaching assistants, some of which had more EYFS experience than how old I was. I knew I needed to get this balance right. In September, I was entering a pool of experienced staff. I needed to learn and grasp their individual areas of knowledge and expertise and I was this new fresh face going in with new ideas but wanting to know what already worked well. The fact that I managed the situation well and I had learnt a lot from their experience, they then fully trusted me. Reflectively, at the end of the year, it started to go the other way, asking me whether we could do things, and liking the new approach and changes that I had implemented. I believe it is where I formed those relationships really early on not only in my ECT year but as a student teacher, the team felt comfortable and confident to do that. I could have never imagined when I started that I would be part of leading a team with 5/6 TA's in, so that is something to really be proud of.
This leads on to reflecting upon what I have learnt this year in regards to my strengths. I have really developed my knowledge and skills working with children who have SEND. Through working with expert specialists in the school, as well as reading and researching a lot in my own free time, I am really proud of the work I have done in this area, not just for the pupils in my class, but setting an expectation for the whole phase. At times, I almost felt I was back at university, completing independent research, trialing what worked and didn't and overtime implementing this from an individual pupil level, to a whole phase expectation. In terms of my own teacher development, here, I feel like I really bettered myself as a practitioner. I looked at the needs that we had amongst our setting and I knew that changes needed to be made to ensure every learner was making small steps of progress daily. Developing my adaptive teaching this year to make sure every single child individual needs is a priority, is an area that I feel was a strength this year.
I hope you have enjoyed this element of the reflection and hopefully it was helpful to students heading into their first year of teaching. It is so important to draw on not just the school placement and degree content in your teaching, but the skills you have developed whilst completing the degree. Using my researching skills I established from my undergraduate degree, really supported on reflection, one of my key strengths of the year.
As always, to finish with a quote that I feel not only sums up a vital skill of a teacher, but how my blog and this key critical reflections improve my practice as a teacher:
"The more reflective you are, the more effective you are." - Hall and Simeral
- Miss Yeoman.
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