Page 64: ECT 1 Complete - What aspects of the role have I found challenging this year?
The final instalment of my ECT 1 completed series is exploring and reflecting upon what aspects of the role I have found challenging this year, and reflecting in terms of what I felt could have been useful in my teacher training to support this.
To begin, I would like to make it distinctly clear that obviously the year was fantastic and that I would not have changed anything, but everything can not always run smoothly, and it is inevitable to have some more challenging times throughout the year and aspects that you will find slightly more difficult.
The first area that I originally found a little tricky was dealing and managing change. Half way through the year, we reflected on how our provision was working. As a whole Nursery team (we are a two form entry school), we decided that for the best interests of the children, we were going to join classrooms and classes for provision learning and work together day to day more directly. I knew that this was our better option, however, it was natural to feel apprehensive about the change as I knew my day to day classroom routine was going to change. I had to learn how to approach this in the right way as I obviously wanted to take all of the daily things and sayings etc my class did and vice versa and the thought of this was quite overwhelming. On reflection of the experience both myself and my class, when settled into this new routine coped well and I look forward to starting this off from September next year to ensure continuity and consistency from the set off!
The next are I am going to delve into is self confidence! When reflecting on the year, at many times I needed to have higher self confidence when having difficult conversations. These conversations are always hard to manage and not the nicest to be had, however when needed, they are essential. In September, when I had my first 'tricky' conversation with a parent I did feel unprepared (not at all by school, but just from the lack of experience never having done this before). I am aware that I completed my teaching training during the COVID-19 pandemic so as a student, it was not always possible to have these face to face conversations with parents, however now, I do feel it would be useful as part of your university training to have a few more tasks regarding working alongside parents. As a student teacher, traditionally the class teacher would take and lead a more challenging conversation but I do think as a student it is really important to have maybe have a series of lectures/seminars on handling more challenging conversations. I do feel this would be very useful as when I cast my mind back to my first half term, self confidence in this area was definitely a main challenge. Now, as the year has progressed, I feel from working hard at this, and forming excellent relationships with all parents, getting them on board, I would say this is now probably an area of strength!
I strongly believe that sharing this side of my first year of teaching, reflecting on some of my more challenging moments is probably the most useful for any trainees or potentially the most interesting for any general readers. Once again, thank you for joining me and I look forward to continue to work on my implemented changed from reflecting on the initial challenges next year.
"Our ability to handle lives challenges, is a measure of our character strength." - Les Brown.
- Miss Yeoman.
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