THE Trainee Teacher 's Blog for 2016 - so you want to be a teacher?

The blog for the trainee teacher. Everything you need to know to become an outstanding teacher and make the most of your teacher training year!

​
This blog is a step by step survival guide for the trainee teacher giving you regular advice for what you need, when you need it!
 
It’s September and you are finally embarking on your training year to become a teacher. All through the summer you will probably have searched the internet for information, made sure you could read all you can find on teaching, and generally prepared yourself for this year. Or you will have enjoyed your last holiday as a student, and waited until your placement until you throw yourself into whatever you need to do to pass this year.

Either way, you will find this blog invaluable.

​Most of you will have considered the type of teacher you wish to become – you know what makes a good teacher, and what constitutes a good lesson (more of that in a later blog) and you want to work hard to meet those expectations in yourself. You will be hoping that you build good relationships with the students so they also see you as that good teacher. And it all starts now!

If you can visualise yourself as a good or outstanding teacher, you are probably going to want all the information to help you get there in one go! Logically you know this can’t happen and after your first few days you will be so overloaded with information that all you will want to do when you get home is go to sleep for a week! But I also know from experience that any early criticism students give regarding their provider training tends to be that ‘they wish they had learnt about behaviour management at the beginning of the course’, or ‘why didn’t anyone go through the teacher standards with them at the beginning?’ Chances are that the providers do cover it, but as students you aren’t yet as able to make sense of the information at the start as you will be later on!

This blog – which you can return to time and time again – will work alongside you on the weekly aspects you will need to focus on. Designed to complement the training you receive from your provider, and the invaluable support you will get from your mentor, this blog will offer tips and advice at least three times every week. Its aim is to get right to the heart of what you need, when you need it.

In the first half term we will explore:

• How to make the most of observing others – with suggested focuses for each observation you undertake
• How to make the most of working with your mentor
• How you develop from a trainee into a teacher – understanding the stages you will go through will help you to manage any occasions when you feel under pressure, or that you are not doing as well as you had hoped – and believe me, you will experience this as it is part of the normal cycle of development!
• Behaviour management, lesson planning and classroom management tips
• How students learn and how the brain works - very useful to understand when planning your lessons
• You will also receive regular tips on how to evidence the standards

---

Next blog post: How to make the most out of observing