Well I'm two weeks into my second placement, and I've had to take today off because of stress.
It doesn't help I got moved to a new school shortly before Xmas that was completely different to the last one. For my first placement, a full class of Y2 in a big school. I got moved to a village school to be put in a Reception/Y1/Y2 class, and I'm finding it very difficult to keep on top of the workload just because of the sheer amount of planning. I spend my weekends doing three separate phonics plans for three groups at different phases for every day of the week; only one of which I'll actually teach (one does handwriting, other works with a TA). I have to do a weekly plan for Literacy or numeracy, for which I have to decide which year group is doing what. Often Y2s do something completely different and I have to plan a second lesson within a lesson.
Every night I'm having to plan for the next day, because I just don't have the time at the weekend to try and mentally plan and type out 5 days' worth of lesson plans, and to be frank I don't have the energy. Spending every night until 10:30pm planning for the next day has just worn me down. Not only that, the class have started to wear me down by talking over me and just not listening, and that is also wearing me down. I haven't had chance to start ANYTHING to do with uni work, and that is seriously stressing me out as well right now. My medium term plans are almost redundant because having taught this class they just won't work, and I'm having to plan each lesson as I go from scratch almost.
I have broken down twice already, one of which was in front of my mentor and headteacher. Just the other night I almost quit there and then. Yesterday I went in and had a better day, but my mentor phoned my head of programme and they decided I need a day off 'sick'. I still have a headache today, but it's all being blamed on the fact that I am trying to do TOO MUCH, and I'm just not working efficiently enough.
It all sounds very negative I know. But the thing is, I have been graded 'good' with a couple of satisfactory elements so far. My mentor has reassured me I'm doing very very well at this point of my placement. The only downsides are promoting positive behaviour strategies and doing more monitoring and assessment. It's not like I'm terrible at teaching, I just can't mentally handle it. How the hell will I do this full time?!
So it's decision time for me this weekend. My academic tutor has told me it's perfectly normal and most students are feeling this way right now. I'm not the most positive of people anyway, but it's getting to the point my head hurts every time I think of planning! I have a lot of support around me, but it hurts my pride to have to ask for help all the time. It just makes me feel weak, and being a perfectionist/conscientious person I can't allow myself to be directed or steered by a teacher or a mapped-out unit, especially when I feel like they are boring lessons and in order to make them more exciting I have to spend more time planning. MY Y2s just look bored all the time, especially when I'm trying to teach about alphabetical order and one Y2 can order up to the third letter and a Reception child can't even say what comes after 'm'.