PGCE - Current Students Thread

This thread is crazy. I am currently doing a pgce, its not bloody hard. Teaching is not rocket science. The course is time consuming with a ton of paper work but it is not hard!! Organisation is key. If you are feeling stressed then ask yourself 'am i on the front line in afghan?' 'Do i live in syria?' 'Am i fighting cancer or some other horrible disease?'. Unless the answer is yes then chill out and get on with it!l

Hi guys i'm struggling a bit with my first essay. We have to evaluate a lesson based on certain 'criteria' for instance I have chosen literacy and use of ict in literacy. We then have to do a short literature review which is the basis for evaluating the lessons. The bulk of the essay should be the evaluation of the lesson. I guess my issue is how exactly I squeeze in a literature review of literacy and ict into about 500 words each and still cover everything I need to cover in order to evaluate the lesson. Never had to do a literature review before so finding it a bit tricky. I don't have much of a background in education so don't really know where to look first...

Now into my 3rd month of the secondary PGCE course and i can honestly say i have never looked forward to Xmas quite as much as i currently am! This has been the hardest few months i have ever experienced. Such a massive amount of work to be done all the time. Lesson plans still taking me hours and I'm never more than a day ahead of myself! Assignment due in 2 weeks and not even beyond the introduction. Getting home at 5pm every night due to the distance of my placement school and leaving at 7:20am every morning. Weekends written off and relationship with my partner suffering!


Anyone else feel this way too?

Also a little reminder to all those wanting to apply for next year; this is CERTAINLY not an option for you if you're doing it just to put off finding a job! HUGE step up from undergrad degree!! (i think the MA students are a little better prepared)

Rant over.

Let's not turn this into a competition of 'whose job/course is harder'. Each one has their own challenges, and therefore can't easily be compared. Of course healthcare (and other roles) are stressful, but that doesn't make teaching any LESS stressful than it is to the people who are doing it

Well perhaps I am a tad biased as teachers (more specifically teachers unions) annoy me quite a lot. They get long holidays, nice hours, pay is not that bad and yet the strike at the drop of a hat. For someone to complain about leaving at 7.20am and getting home at 5pm is, to me, ridiculous. Don't most of the country do that?

School hours may be good, but teachers have a lot to do outside of lessons and therefore don't get the full holidays even. I lived with someone who had been a teacher for over a decade and she would work 80+ hour weeks

Yes but if you consider that against the rest of the population. Teachers don't 'even' get the full holiday...what is it 8,9 weeks a year? Most people only get 28 days. Lots of healthcare workers will have to work late if there's an emergency, or be on call, or stay behind unpaid to do paperwork etc. My sister is a PA and sometimes she's in the office until 8pm, and always bringing work home. My boyfriend is a journalist and some days isn't home until 10pm. I'm not saying that teaching isn't difficult,or stressful, I'm sure it is. But it just seems as though collectively teachers are never satisfied, despite the fact that most of the working population face similar pressures (but don't strike every time they feel like it).

PGCE students or those thinking of teaching, avert your eyes. There are many positives to the job; felt so proud when writing my year 11 references this week

From TES
The statutory working hours for teachers are 195 days a year across 39 term time weeks. The statutory working hours are 1265 hours – when this is divided by the number of days it works out at 6 hours and 45 minutes per day, which can be presumed to be 6 hours work and 45 minutes lunch based on a working day of 8.30 am – 3.30 pm. On this basis, the actual number of working hours is 1170 excluding lunch.
Having taken account of the number of working days, this leaves teachers with 66 days of holiday a year (inclusive of all bank holidays, including May Day).

Outside of teaching there are 261 business days a year (excluding weekends). The average office worker gets 24 days holiday a year with an additional 8 bank holidays, creating a total of 32 days. The average working day is 9am – 5pm with an hour for lunch. The number of working hours in a year are therefore 229 days x 7 hours a day = 1603 working hours excluding lunch.

Here’s the initial comparison (excluding lunch breaks):

Teacher: 1170 working hours per year
Office Worker: 1603 working hours per year
Teacher: 6 hour working day
Office worker: 7 hour working day
Teacher: 66 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays
Office worker: 32 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays.

However, these calculations do not take account of teachers’ extra hours which I have estimated below. Please note that my estimates are based on personal experience and observation of colleagues and teaching family members and the number of extra hours may be more or less in individual cases. These estimates are the number of hours spent yearly on each activity:

Parents’ evenings: 15 hours
Open evenings: 3 hours
After school meetings: 12 hours
Extra-curricular (very conservative): 39 hours
Detention / intervention: 78 hours
Planning, preparation, marking (term time week nights @ 2 hours a night): 390 hours
Planning, preparation, marking (term time weekends @ 6 hours): 234 hours
Planning, preparation, marking (during school holidays, conservative estimate of 3 days per holiday across all three half terms, Easter, Christmas and Summer = 6 x 3 days @ 6 hours per day): 108 hours.
Total: 879 hours

On this basis a teacher works 2049 hours across the year.

Let’s do the comparison again, just looking at the number of hours worked per day (presuming none on the weekend), but leaving the holidays the same:

Teacher: 2049 working hours per year
Office worker: 1603 working hours per year
Teacher: 10.5 hour working day
Office worker: 7 hour working day
Teacher: 66 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays
Office worker: 32 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays

Okay, so it’s clear that if you average a teacher’s workload out they have a significantly longer working day than the average office worker, but don’t the holidays more than make up for this? After all they have a whole 34 extra days!

So let’s have a look at a comparison of teacher’s working hours on the basis of having the same holiday entitlement as an average office worker:

Teacher: 2049 working hours per year
Officer worker: 1603 working hours per year
Teacher: 9 hour working day
Office worker: 7 hour working day
Teacher: 32 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays (would have to continue working 9 hours a day during the other 34 days ‘holiday’)
Office worker: 32 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays

It doesn’t look so good now does it? Even with an average number of days holiday a teacher would still need to work 2 more hours a day than average to fit in everything they do in a year. So… what happens to the holiday entitlement if we give teachers a standard 7 hour working day? Take into account that there are 261 business days in a year.

Teacher: 2049 working hours per year
Office worker: 1603 working hours per year
Teacher: 7 hour working day
Office worker: 7 hour working day
Teacher: 292 working days per year
Office worker: 229 working days per year
Teacher: No holiday days and 31 weekend days a year worked in excess of business days
Officer worker: 32 days inclusive of bank holidays.

Its terrible how much time off teachers have isn’t it?

Hi

I'm on week 3 of my first placement ( secondary school) and I am really doing battle with bottom set year 9s. I cannot get them to be quiet, especially as I do not want to shout, my voice cannot take it.

so - my question - does anyone have, or know where I can get - a good audio of nails being scraped down a blackboard? My plan, is next time they are not listening, is to play that audio, until they shut-up (and then tell them that they will hear said horrible noise everytime they ignore my requests to be quiet).

Thanks

Hi

I'm on week 3 of my first placement ( secondary school) and I am really doing battle with bottom set year 9s. I cannot get them to be quiet, especially as I do not want to shout, my voice cannot take it.

so - my question - does anyone have, or know where I can get - a good audio of nails being scraped down a blackboard? My plan, is next time they are not listening, is to play that audio, until they shut-up (and then tell them that they will hear said horrible noise everytime they ignore my requests to be quiet).

Thanks

Had my first PGCE related nightmare last night! I'm teaching 2 art lessons next week, making a bonfire and firework picture using collage and straw blowing paint. I've been pretty worried about not having enough materials at school for it so I've bought some bits like tissue paper and cellophane, but don't want to spend too much. Anyway, I'm teaching on Tuesday, but in my nightmare I got it wrong and was actually teaching on Monday, I'd bought none of the materials in, had no example to show them, didn't have my ppt ready and just couldn't do it, it was a disaster, in the end my mentor stepped in with a backup lesson she'd prepared because she expected me to mess up

On another tangent completely... I've decided I'd like to look for jobs in London. Does anyone know where to start with the job hunt? Beyond TES Jobs I haven't got a clue!!