foolfillment: the blog

At last night’s TeachMeet for students and probationer teachers I gave a 7 minute presentation on my own probation experiences. It was all very self indulgent I thought but people seemed to like it so I’m going to share it here.

I used Prezi for the first time to collect a few images together, last night I saw some really good uses of prezi – while some people think it can induce headaches I saw last night how fantastic it is not to be stuck in a linear presentation.

Here’s the link to the prezi I used, though I fear that on it’s own it won’t make a great deal of sense as it was really just an aide memoire for me. My main points were somthing like this:

• Make sure you get up to the staff room and speak to as many other people as you can. Don’t hide away in your classroom on your own working.
• Observe as many people as you can, it needn’t be formally but just get into classes all over the school if you can to see how other people do what you want to do.
• Make sure you have a life away from school, find a way to switch off and stop thinking school
• Set aside some time each week to get the GTCS housekeeping done, the stuff you need to do isn’t too onerous but if you let it pile up it can be very difficult to get back in top of.
• Spend time reflecting on how you are doing, it needn’t always be formally, just chatting about things with people helps – see the first point.
• Write up loads of mock application forms and get people to read them. Pester other teachers for their opinions. If possile ask people outside of your subject. Do the same for interviews – get loads of previous interview questions and prepare some answers for them, do as many mock interviews as you can.

Far from a comprehensive list but I think doing those things last year helped me.

You might see a theme developing here, I’m basically just asking for people to give me lots of their ideas, under the guise of sharing good practice Today’s theme is how to set up a classroom.

In August I will have the amazing luxury of having my very own classroom, this is something that is almost unheard of for a Tech teacher, and as such it is not something I’ve given much thought to. Since getting the Hawick post I’ve been thinking a little about what I could do to the layout of desks, or what resources I should have out – that sort of thing. Having never had my own room before though I’ve never been through all the practicalities of it and I’m sure I’ll have forgotten or overlooked important things.

So, I’m asking those of you out there who may have something to say to say it. If you were starting from scratch in a new room what 5 things would you do?