Sunday, November 13, 2011
Teaching advice needed- please help! =(?
Hello. I am in my first year on a three year primary teaching course with a teacher who is not the most supportive teacher I've worked with. Before beginning this placement, I was very confident, motivated, determined. I still am extremely motivated and determined but my confidence has been tarnished to an extent. I am on placement one day a week with a year 1 cl. I have been told this school has had some fairly bad students in the past and this may be why my cl teacher is so critical. In their eyes, I can do nothing right. I put my all into my placement, I try so hard and they are far too critical. I work with the children in their ability groups, question the children, am enthusiastic and yet the teacher says I hold back. When I got my last feedback form, it was the worst thing I have ever read in my life about myself. It said basically that I wasn't interested in teaching, that I wasn't teaching and that I was holding back when I worked with the children. After hearing my coordinator read that out to me I was crying for the rest of the day. I know I am not a bad teacher. Before the course, I did do a few placements in schools, as a TA and they had nothing but praise for me, they said I was enthusiastic, basically all those teachers were very supportive and lovely..more than welcoming and I learned so much from them. This teacher is very critical, stern, talks in a very formal way and makes lessons very dull for the children. They lack enthusiasm and seem to forget what it's like to learn to be a teacher. We go into schools in two's so with another person from our course and this person was at the start, about on the same level as me although he did have slightly more experience than me. Over time, my cl teacher began to praise him more and more and nothing I did was right in her eyes. He's certainly the favourite. I however work harder and am always volunteering to do extra jobs for the TA's, am always getting involved, questioning the chn etc while he just stands there and yet I am the one who is criticised. It has made me doubt myself, doubt my ability to become a teacher, I've started to shake now when I am standing at the front of the cl teaching because I know my cl teacher is watching and they actually scowl and glare at me. It just really upsets me to see me go into my shell which certainly is a far cry from what I was like on my placement before I started university. My coordinator just says get on with it and we are not allowed to complain about our placements to the university because they see it as some kind of weakness. I am just a nervous wreck. So upset and feel like I have nobody to talk to about it because nobody seems to understand or will listen. I'm not giving up teaching because of this teacher. I have a month block placement coming up and am absolutely petrified and sick of pretending everything's fine while the teacher just gets away with it. I am a naturally strong person but this has been going on all year since october and is really starting to get me down. I'm thinking of going for hypnotherapy to try and change my mindset and make me more positive about the block because the experience is so horrible. It's just a nightmare. I was a confident teacher and I love teaching and working with the children but this experience is just so uncomfortable. My cl teacher just hates me and I've done nothing wrong and now they say that I'm quite quiet on my evaluation forms so that's one more thing for them to put down. Well i'm back on placement in just over two weeks and I need to make sure that I follow everything the teacher has told me so far. I'm going to work harder than ever so the teacher has no possible grounds to complain about me. I need to prove her wrong and have the determination to do so, I just need to get my confidence back so I don't crumble when I see her again. It's bullying, that's the way I see it, because I've done nothing wrong and am certainly not lazy on placement. Please give me some advice. Much appreciated and sorry this is so long and may not be cohesive or make perfect sense. Just needed to get it off my chest to see if anyone else can help me.
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