A different perspective......

Today was the final day of my observation week at Neath College Business School, and it's been a full and thought provoking week. It was wonderful to see my old tutors without the spectre of assignment deadlines hovering over us as we spoke, but it was strange to be returning as a trainee teacher, there to work alongside them. I was looking forward to the challenge of sitting in a classroom, and concentrating my attention on the style of delivery, as opposed to the content, as was the case when I was a student.

The majority of my teaching time will be in HE on the HND and Foundation Degree courses, where I will be teaching Strategy, Enterprise Management, Business Communications, and Information Management. I will also be working with students who are undertaking the Live Project module, a year long research task, which culminates in a mini dissertation and a presentation. This module is going to give me ample opportunity to pass on some of the tips and tools I have acquired in ICT with Mandy, and it will be interesting to see how they are incorporated by different students. My final HE module is Employability and Professional Development, a module which involves self audit and personal development, where I hope to utilise some of the theories and ideas introduced by Natalie in the PPT module.

I was fortunate enough to be able to observe a wide range of teaching styles and courses, not only in the classes I will be working in, but in A Levels, BTEC, and Welsh Baccalaureate classes. Although I won't be teaching A Levels, the opportunity to see the different tutors working was invaluable, and one I could not pass up. I am hoping to continue to observe these classes, in order to gain as much knowledge as I can. After Christmas, I hope to be involved in teaching on some of the BTEC and Welsh Baccalaureate classes, if the opportunity arises. If this remains unfeasible, I have offered to go in as additional support, so I can continue observations whilst making a practical contribution to the class.

There is one aspect of my placement which is giving me cause for concern, and that is the temperamental nature of the IT equipment. Many of the tutors reported frequent struggles with whiteboards unwilling to cooperate, projector bulbs inexplicably blowing, and computers which took longer to warm up and run programs than a teenage boy would take to get out of bed on a Sunday morning. As an ex-student, I can testify that this is an all too familiar issue, and appreciate that I will need to be creative in my lesson planning, to accommodate any such problems when they occur. The positive side is that the tutors at Neath have developed some excellent strategies to counter these drawbacks, which I have seen being successfully implemented.

I am beyond happy with the opportunities I have been given, not only to teach others, but to learn myself whilst at Neath College. The staff team there have my undying gratitude for being so generous with their time when answering my numerous questions, and for their willingness to allow me to sit in on their lessons and see how they teach and manage their diverse learner groups. With this level of expertise and support around me, I can only move onwards and upwards with my professional development.