Emma's Story: ‘The story of an NQT’
The first course I was sent on was about a month into being a real teacher. It was for Newly Qualified Teachers and by the time it came round I was ready for a day out of the classroom. It had been a steep learning curve and I was looking forward to being around other new teachers who must also, by now, be wondering what we thought was so tough about teacher training. Packed into a room of one hundred plus NQTs, it began by outlining the day and letting us know that we would only get out what we put into the day. Some participants on the course the previous year had evidently made the mistake of being brutally honest on their course evaluation. And they pitched the venue’s “really quite good” dining room to us. So with an open mind I listened to the course leaders and by mid-morning had learnt that I was the only special school teacher there, that NQTs were “discouraged” from embarking on their induction year in special schools, and that, when asked, I should have kept quiet about the number of pupils (seven) and other adults (two) in my classroom when that poor NQT over there has thirty-five pupils and only a volunteer mum for ten minutes each morning, and the one on the next table has twenty-eight books to mark each night and a pupil on the autistic spectrum fully occupying her teaching assistant. We went on to cover marking, bemoan that SEN child, and did we fancy starting an MA yet? I wished I’d bought some planning to do. Lunch was nice.
I’d begged my mentor not to send me on day two, leaving him with the misplaced notion that I was in fact having trouble separating from my class. And every now and then I tried to bury the feeling that the leaders of the NQT course would end up being right because when it came to paperwork I was drowning not waving. Whilst I loved the job I’d found and enjoyed the pupils, I was also responsible for ensuring their very wide range of needs were met. I’d sit down to plan a lesson and wonder where to start from the old or new scheme of work (which was which?), or their P-levels, IEP targets and Speech and Language targets, occupational therapy and physiotherapy targets? Perhaps I should look back through my lecture notes or at the INSET handouts in the back of the cupboard I’d inherited for clues. No time for courses (or eating or sleeping), I’ve got to get my head round all this!
Sceptically I attend my first Stride course. The people standing before the dozen of us assembled are both called Sue, but are more like Trinny and Susannah. They know their stuff, they have been there and they intend to give it to you straight. They are ex-SMT and have worked in special needs schools and other fields allied to ours. They don’t know the pupils you work with but might as well. They do know an awful lot about what the QCA say about your pupils and will save you wading through hours of documents by giving you a light handout with a couple of short key excerpts. They have thrown in sheets that give you ideas for activities to do with your pupils with needs associated with PMLD that are really good fun for everyone, as well as how to plan for their learning. They go on to insist that since ‘repetition is the key to learning’ [QCA] then the lesson you plan absolutely must happen once a week for the rest of the term. The Sues get you talking with the other nursery nurses, teachers and assistants there that day who have valuable experiences and ideas to add in to the mix, or who also didn’t know but suspected- that they were trying to reinvent the wheel! What is the Sue’s opinion on pages and pages of planning? ‘If it’s more than a side of A4 its too much!’.
I left feeling inspired, relieved and enthusiastic to put into practise what I’d had the chance to reflect on. The day is light-hearted and entertaining and, importantly, very usable. Oh, and lunch is excellent.
