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I messed up my QTS placement. I’m lost.

I just need to vent about this. I feel so dejected, stressed and whatnot. Advice might be nice too.

I’m in my first year of my undergraduate bachelor of honours primary school teaching. Usually, we would be on placement the year round, but Covid has made that very difficult. Instead of being introduced to placement slowly, we were thrown into a three week intensive placement instead. I started a placement on Monday 10th of May, and honestly I couldn’t have been happier with the school. The kids were lovely, I really got to work there, I made some great observation notes and I just really felt like the placement was going well.

I got misgendered quite a lot, which is okay, but whenever I tried to explain, a lot of people just didn’t understand. It continued to happen a lot, and I was told that it was just something I was going to have to deal with sometimes.
A lot of other things were weird - me and the other person who were on placement together often had lunch alone in the classroom, where we would chat and whatnot. The teachers didn’t like us laughing, because of how we presented ourselves to the children, but there were no children in the room at any of these times.
Not only that, but afterschool on Thursday, we had our weekly review. The person on placement with me didn’t take it too well, and when we left the school that day she burst into tears. I just hugged her. I didn’t know what else I could do, really. Our class mentor saw us hugging and told us it was inappropriate, and also we needed to think about how the children saw us. There weren’t any children around, and she was honestly bawling her eyes out. It just embarrassed us both.

I also had a huge anxiety attack on the morning of Friday, and I emailed the school explaining that I wouldn’t be in because of it. They deemed this unprofessional, because it felt from their POV that I just felt like I could take days off, which isn’t at all what I thought. I understand why they may have thought that, though.

A lot of other things were said as well, and I became aware of teachers who worked at the school gossiping about me and my placement partner to their own student trainees, which I thought was super unprofessional.

Long story short, I got pulled from my placement. Both me and my teaching partner. I hate myself so much. I feel like I messed up so bad, and I just need advice maybe. Has anyone else even been in the same situation? Did I mess up super bad? I can go on other placement if they manage to find me one, but I just need to talk to someone who might have gone through something similar.
Reply 1
This reads as though you'd been in the school for weeks and yet from the dates it seems it was all a single week which makes it quite hard to work out how it could have gone wrong so quickly.

I think you need to ask for more explanation as to why your behaviour was judged to be unacceptable as you don't seem to feel some of the accusations were fair - if you're going to learn from it you might benefit from more detail is the claims were fair. You need an honest talk with your supervisor at university to work out where to go from here.
Original post by lankoshi
I just need to vent about this. I feel so dejected, stressed and whatnot. Advice might be nice too.

I’m in my first year of my undergraduate bachelor of honours primary school teaching. Usually, we would be on placement the year round, but Covid has made that very difficult. Instead of being introduced to placement slowly, we were thrown into a three week intensive placement instead. I started a placement on Monday 10th of May, and honestly I couldn’t have been happier with the school. The kids were lovely, I really got to work there, I made some great observation notes and I just really felt like the placement was going well.

I got misgendered quite a lot, which is okay, but whenever I tried to explain, a lot of people just didn’t understand. It continued to happen a lot, and I was told that it was just something I was going to have to deal with sometimes.
A lot of other things were weird - me and the other person who were on placement together often had lunch alone in the classroom, where we would chat and whatnot. The teachers didn’t like us laughing, because of how we presented ourselves to the children, but there were no children in the room at any of these times.
Not only that, but afterschool on Thursday, we had our weekly review. The person on placement with me didn’t take it too well, and when we left the school that day she burst into tears. I just hugged her. I didn’t know what else I could do, really. Our class mentor saw us hugging and told us it was inappropriate, and also we needed to think about how the children saw us. There weren’t any children around, and she was honestly bawling her eyes out. It just embarrassed us both.

I also had a huge anxiety attack on the morning of Friday, and I emailed the school explaining that I wouldn’t be in because of it. They deemed this unprofessional, because it felt from their POV that I just felt like I could take days off, which isn’t at all what I thought. I understand why they may have thought that, though.

A lot of other things were said as well, and I became aware of teachers who worked at the school gossiping about me and my placement partner to their own student trainees, which I thought was super unprofessional.

Long story short, I got pulled from my placement. Both me and my teaching partner. I hate myself so much. I feel like I messed up so bad, and I just need advice maybe. Has anyone else even been in the same situation? Did I mess up super bad? I can go on other placement if they manage to find me one, but I just need to talk to someone who might have gone through something similar.

For you both to be pulled from your placement, suggests the school has messed up, not you.

Reading between the lines, I'm assuming you're somewhere on the spectrum of being trans (sorry for the slightly clumsy language, I hope you get what you mean). Discrimination can still be rife in schools, and I do think you should speak to uni for advice. Are you in a union? If not, I suggest you join one ASAP- it's free as a student teacher.

A lot of schools are still behind the times on MH issues. I hate to say this, but in future if you need a MH day, refer to yourself as being ill and don't clarify. You are ill. You can't come in because of your health.

I would say that hugging is inappropriate (I get why you did it, though), not because of children seeing or anything but because it does unfortunately break covid regulations. I know it's our natural human reaction.

You laughing and joking shouldn't be a problem. I do think isolating yourself from other staff can be though. I know it's tough to go into a main staffroom, but it often makes a better impression. Ignore this if there are numbers limits etc on place in the staffroom though.

I would discuss this with the uni, but it sounds to me like it's the school's problem, not yours. I understand why you are upset though.

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