Yesterday I lay in bed and had a serious word with myself lol. For as long as I can remember on and off I’ve wanted to be a teacher, through my first and second year of uni, I kept telling myself I’m here to get my degree and then I’ll go do a PGCE and become a teacher.
I then did my teaching experience and kinda fell out of love with the idea of teaching upper school kids, so then looked at teaching Primary Ed, again not so keen. I decided I’d work for maybe a year and see what I felt then, however in that time That Boy finished his course at university and then the church decided the youth worker would be part time – so money wasn’t really around for me to quit my job and go train as a teacher.
Anyhoo, I’ve been graduated university now for 3 years, and decided that something needed to be done. My job is okay and in the grand scheme of things could be worse (I could be flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant)
So here I am on the 28th July deciding that I am going to go train to be a teacher. I’d quite like to teach English and/or Drama at Secondary School level but I’m going to go and discuss with the local SCITT service and see what they say. Hopefully I can get on a course where I work in a school for 2 or 3 days a week and then go to uni for the other two or something like that depending on how the course works.
For now I stick with the day job and have to start saving so that if I need to I can pay the £3k fees myself, unfortunately it does mean that Italy next March/April could be off the cards – unless we can fit going in the Easter Holidays maybe – I guess we’ll see.
And as Ruby quoted to me via Twitter earlier today email “Run with it. Invest all your time & energy – pursue that dream. As Yoda says ‘do or do not, there is no try’” – Yes she did quote Star Wars at me – I blame it on the fact that it was like midnight in Aussie when she wrote it lol.
As much as it pains my inner (and outer) Trekkie to say it, that’s a brilliant quote, and absolutely perfect for this situation. We only have one life – spend it going after those dreams!!
hehe I think I am more of a Trekkie than a Jedi (what is the Star Wars equivalent of Trekkie?)
Hi Hannah, saw this via your facebook.
I had a place for after uni on a teacher training course with these people:
http://www.bedsscitt.org.uk/more_info.asp?current_id=91
I was going to go down the GTP route rather than PGCE so there are no tuition fees and you get a fairly decent salary to start with so leaving work isn’t quite so bad.
Obviously I didn’t take my place on the course as I was pregnant with Finlay but hopefully I’ll apply again when he starts school himself (which isn’t that far away – sob)! I quite like the idea of us starting school together actually Lol
Hope you’re well,
Zoe x
Hey Zoe! Thank you for commenting 🙂
I had a look at the Beds SCITT website the other day but they are closed for the summer so won’t get a reply to any emails at the moment lol.
Finlay must be starting school next year right? I think you’ll be a great teacher 😀
Hi Han,
Definetly think you should go for it, It might be hard work fanancially but well worth in the long run going for your dreams. There must be funding out there to help, or a way you can work and train at the same time.
I’m still trying to get my head round my writing course I started years ago, I’ve paid for it but am taking ages actually doing the work lol. Good job there’s no time limit to doing it. I will do it, whether I’ll become a successful writer, I don’t know, but I’ll certainly give it a go. Was listening to some old songs yesterday and came across ‘Ruby Tuesday’ by Melenie…. love the line in it: ‘use your dreams or you might loose your mind’.
Good luck
Hey Doobie! Thanks for commenting! I think I heard Ruby Tuesday years and years ago – I’ll look it up when I get home after work 🙂
I second Ruby! Do it, do it, do it! You’re definitely young enough to take the time and to take on the debt to follow your dream.
Yay, Han!
Hehe thanks Cardiogirl! I will be sure to keep you posted on deciding whether to go ahead or not lol.
I was going to say almost the same as Zoe – look into GTP. You’ll probably feel a lot more supported while working in school than you will do in university – my ITT provider has a policy of “even if it is really something we as a university should have done, you’re an inadequate teacher for not doing it yourself.” Also, you’ve already proved that you can write essays for 3 years, why do it for one more?
One other thing I will say is one of caution – in my opinion, and this is shared with some other teachers I know, teaching is a drug. It’s more addictive than caffeine and probably other substances – with the difference that you get paid to get high rather than the other way around! The reason this is a caution is that once you’re hooked you need to be careful that you don’t beat yourself up when things go wrong. Everything doesn’t have to go right first time – or even second time.
When I was on placement in Basildon this year my link tutor didn’t like the way I did things – but that is because of her perspective on how things should be done, rather than digging deeper: such as finding out that I had tried doing things her way (the ‘university way’), and the children hardly learned anything. However, once I started doing things in the way that the class teacher did them, the children learned stuff. It wasn’t as high quality as it should have been, but that’s because they didn’t learn much from the high quality methods. The link tutor tried to put me off, but like I said – I’m addicted to teaching, even when it’s in situations that I don’t like.
What this means is that if you want to be a teacher, stick to your values. Let your values change if need be, but stick by them – and while it is always a good idea to listen to criticism, after all it is so crucial to your development into a great teacher, don’t be afraid to ignore the useless critiques when they come your way. It’s a hard process, and that’s why I say don’t beat yourself up about it. Set targets for improvement, of course – but giving up is certainly not the easy way out. Once your addiction is set in, you probably won’t feel like doing any other job.
Also, I advise that before you apply for anything, look into what the new government is doing to education. I don’t like a lot of their new plans and yet I’m going to be stuck doing it because I can’t help but teach (see the end of the last paragraph!). There’s also the thing about new teachers being required to do a masters – I’m going to resist that as long as I can because I know how little improvement it makes in comparison to what they claim it makes.
If you don’t mind the idea of doing a masters while you’re working, then don’t worry about all of this – but like I said, once you’re hooked on teaching it’s hard to go back – so if there’s things you don’t like already, and don’t feel like getting into fights with the government/LEA/school about, then decide whether you’re going to teach, but work in the private sector, or run while you still can! 😉
In summary, if it’s what you want – I wish you best of luck!!
WOW! Ally I need to come back and read your post and take notes lol. I love teaching the kids at church whether it’s bible stories or just playing tag outside and enjoying the sunshine. I keep complaining about my job and don’t do anything about it – I need a rocket up my behind some days lol. How are you doing? Enjoying the holidays?
No worries Han – you seem really interested in teaching so I wanted to make sure that you have the insider knowledge on how to stay sane and get through your training 🙂 maybe in two years time once I’ve done my NQT year I’ll have some better advice about the real thing!
We all need that rocket sometimes – maybe you need to get someone to be the person who pesters you about whether you’re going to get on with your application. Having just announced your plans to the blogosphere it shouldn’t be hard to find some volunteers!
‘Holidays’ is a strange word this year – I guess it is a holiday from uni work but it doesn’t feel as restful as it should be! I start at Autism Beds on Monday for two weeks, and I’m busy the two weeks after that as well… I’m not really getting a summer holiday like we used to!! How are you?
Ace idea, I really do hope you go for it. We have (at least) 2 teachers in the family (both snuck in via marriage, tut tut) so if there’s anything you need, I can try and find out.
Thanks Rickie. First up I need to find out what I can teach and where I can study. Also get in teaching practice.
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