It's been a long time coming...

I acknowledge that this blog has been a long time coming, I've not written in more than a month and then every time I intended to write this week and last I drew blanks.  It's not that I've got nothing to say, more that there has been so much going on that I'm still trying to make sense of it all myself!  Since last Monday I have been on a summer school before I start at school next week.  As anyone who has been reading these blogs from the outset will know it's been very much a step into the unknown for all of us on School Direct.  To be totally honest there is still much to be found out, the more we find out the more we realise we don't know.  But that goes for many things, doesn't it?

Our University partnership is the only one in the country to be running things this way with a summer school, and we're one of the biggest too.  The partnership is made up of the university, two sets of students from academy chains and a consortium schools from my local area.  As well as providing an interesting variety of people from different backgrounds this has caused some confusion at times.  We're all working towards different goals, some with a full PGCE and QTS with 60 Masters level credits and some QTS with 40 Masters level credits, and that's just our partnership, countrywide there is even more variation.  As well as this, the students from the academy chains seem to be expected to do a lot more from day one, regardless of whether they are salaried or non salaried, they will be teaching their own classes from the beginning.  One thing this week has made me realise is the role our schools will be playing in our training, a lot of the responsibility is in their hands as opposed to the university or even the lead school.  I guess maybe I could've deduced that from the name though, couldn't I?

Being one of those people that likes to be in the know and in control I'm pleased to have the details of my first assignment, the deadlines of all assessments and a rough idea of what I'm aiming for at the end of the year.  The content of the sessions has been elements of Professional Studies and Curriculum Studies to prepare us for the classroom, much as with the usual PGCE I believe.  This has been a good kick start to get our brains into gear, but I need a context to put it in and try it out before I'll really learn it's value.

I have to say that one of the most valuable parts of the summer school has been getting to know the other trainees.  There are 26 of us in our consortium from a range of subjects and across nine or ten schools.  This has been really good as we've all got to know different people and attended different subject sessions but we've had sessions together as well.  During the year we'll be meeting weekly for our Professional Studies sessions so it's important we get on, and luckily we have.  I've read enough articles, blogs, forums etc now to know that we're going to need each other to keep ourselves sane this year!

I'm starting in school on Monday with two INSET days, looking at the timetable from school it looks like it'll be pretty intense but I'm looking forward to getting to know the other staff and getting settled at school.  Unfortunately Wednesday is our first training day so I won't actually be at my own school for the first day of term.  I'm still unsure of how much observation I'll be doing before I start teaching, hopefully this will become clear on Monday.

For now I can only apologise, my brain is frazzled and I've just written my thoughts as they come out of my head.  I've not left myself time to read it through so I imagine the spelling and grammar is appalling but I'd rather post something than nothing.

Wish me luck, I'll blog again at the end of week one if I'm still in one piece that is!

School Direct: Criticisms and variety, don't tar everyone with the same brush.

About a month ago I wrote this post about School Direct and the unknown aspects and misconceptions.  Since then there have been many more articles that only seem to further these misunderstandings.  The coverage of School Direct in the news is overwhelmingly negative and I believe that a lot of this is due to misunderstanding as opposed to criticism of the facts.  I am going to use this opportunity to give my views on some of the criticisms I've seen around:

1) Trainees will not see the same variety of schools that they would via a university-based PGCE route.

As much as this may be true to some extent all School Direct trainees will be expected to spend time in more than one school as required for obtaining QTS.  In fact, some school consortiums are able to provide their trainees with experience in a greater variety of schools.

2) Trainees won't get the important reflection time away from school that they would if they were following a university based training route.

I don't know how this will work for those trainees not gaining a PGCE, but I know that one day a week I will be training in curriculum and professional studies away from my school with other student teachers.  This will give me the opportunity to meet with other students, like I would do had I been at a university, and discuss issues and share experiences with them.

3) There won't be a strong enough focus on theory and academic study.

Again, although I don't know quite how this will work for non-PGCE trainees (presumably in a similar way to the non-PGCE GTP route) but so far I am under the impression that there is still a strong academic focus to my course.  I will be attending university for 2 weeks next month with full days of curriculum and professional studies.  I will still be required to complete academic assignments in order to gain my PGCE and I am still expected to study the same texts as the university based PGCE courses.

As far as I can tell so far, many of these criticisms of School Direct would also apply to Teach First, SCITT or the previous GTP.  

I understand the concerns related to applications and the knock-on effect this is having for university providers and this is certainly an issue that can't be ignored.  That said, in the cases where the School Direct training route also leads to the award of a PGCE I don't see the downside or the risk to teacher quality.

The variety of provision for School Direct across the schools and universities involved is yet to be seen, some with PGCE, some without, some with a wider variety of experience than others.  I guess what I'm saying is when making judgements about School Direct this variety must be kept in mind and we mustn't tar all of the training providers with the same brush.

An enjoyable week and a good experience, but Primary isn't for me thanks!

Keeping track of the reading list. So far so good...

Since getting back home from Lancaster I have been finishing off my preparations for School Direct to get some bits and pieces out of the way before the end of the academic year.  I spent a few days in the MFL department of my old Secondary school and I also went and met all the other trainees studying via the same university and training with the same lead school.  It was really good to finally get to meet people and gives me some faces to look out for at the summer school in August.  It also started to paint a slightly clearer picture of how the year is going to work.  It seems that one day a week will be spent training at one of the schools in the consortium and 6 of these days might be a little further afield depending on our subjects. Looking forward to the summer school now as hopefully we'll get information about how it's all going to work in terms of assignments and second placements.  My few days in Secondary were good too as I got to see all years, except for 11 and 13 of course, and saw a variety of lessons which gave me ideas for September.

As part of the preparations set out by my university I had to spend a week in a Primary school. Unfortunately the last few weeks of the Summer term are not the best for getting into classrooms and seeing lessons going on.  Due to the timing with the end of term I only spent one day with year 6 but two days with year 1 and year 3.  Despite the fact that curriculum teaching has pretty much ended in year 6 I was able to spend a day with them and spent some time asking the teachers about some of the questions I needed to answer including covering the transition to Secondary school.  As part of these investigations we were supposed to focus on our specialist subjects but I soon realised I wouldn't be getting the opportunity to see any languages teaching.  The school I visited used to have a specialist but they don't any longer and now they use a piece of computer software to teach French.  I enjoyed my week in a Primary school but I couldn't do it all the time.  The kids were great and it was a lot of fun but I think that was helped by the knowledge that I'd be done at the end of the week and not coming back!  All the Primary teachers said to me that they wouldn't be able to do Secondary though so I guess it just comes down to personal preference.

Now that everything has calmed down I've got to get on with my reading, I was hoping to have the bulk done before going to Canterbury but I'm not convinced that is going to happen now!  I'm back up to Lancaster later in the week for my Graduation ceremony and then thats it, I'm no longer a Lancaster undergraduate student!

New Staff Day - the picture starts to get a little clearer.

Being a School Direct trainee, I was very surprised to be invited to the New Staff Day at my school.  I guess it's not that surprising really, but I didn't expect the school to treat me as 'one of their own' so to speak.  My first impressions of the school are really good, and today has made me all the more excited for what is to come.  As it was a New Staff Day I was there with a total mix of people, other trainees, NQTs, teachers, subject leaders and cover supervisors.  What I was really pleased about was that we were all treated equally and as trainees we were just as valid a part of the group as anyone else and the same provisions had been made for us.  I'd been a bit worried that I might be a bit of an outsider as a trainee but today proved me wrong.

In terms of support and other training I think I've been very lucky with the school I'm going to be training at.  As a new member of staff each person has been allocated a buddy and those of us that are trainees, NQTs or in their first three years of teaching have also got a mentor.  We got the chance to meet them today and spend a little time in our departments to have a look at things and a bit of a chat.  In terms of other training, there are the usual non-pupil days each term as well as weekly sessions on various topics so it seems that there will be plenty going on that can only work positively for me during my PGCE.  If nothing else, the one thing I will have taken away from today is that I will be training in a very supportive school where everyone is willing to help you, and if this year is anything like I've been told it will be then I'm going to need it!

Later this week I have a social event organised by my lead school, meeting up with other trainees, getting all the important questions answered and getting the all important DBS check out of the way with (I just hope the effort I went to getting the Belgian and Spanish ones sorted is worth it...).  I've finally heard from the University about the Summer School, it'll be nine days at the end of August, residential at the University and no charge - food and room are covered in our tuition fees they say.  It looks like it will be 9-5 curriculum studies one week and professional studies the other.  If all my questions about the structure and assessment etc aren't answered this week then I'd hope that by the end of the summer holiday I'll know it all.  Especially as I start at school the following Monday!  My teaching hours and what days will be spent training are still a grey area, but it's getting there now, slowly but surely!  At least I finally have my degree result, that's something!

School Direct : Preparing for the unknown.

Recently I've come to realise how much misinformation is out there about School Direct and so I wanted to start this blog with a bit about that.  When telling people that I'll be doing School Direct at least one person, a teacher I might add, said to me 'oh yes, because they've got rid of the PGCE haven't they?',  I've also seen newspaper and internet articles that make all sorts of claims about the School Direct scheme that are either untrue or taken out of context.  For anyone reading this that doesn't know about School Direct I'll tell you a little bit more.  School Direct allows schools to pick their own trainees and train them along with a local provider.  Some of these programmes will just lead to Qualified Teacher Status but many of them will also lead to a PGCE, some with credits towards a Masters course.  Trainees on the School Direct scheme will be subject to the same standards as those training via a PGCE and therefore will have to spend time in more than one school and meet all the Teaching Standards before being recommended for QTS.  I think in general the confusion is occurring due to the variety of options available depending on the lead school providing the training, including the fact that some trainees will be salaried and others won't.  The School Direct isn't the only route though, PGCEs are continuing to be run as usual, this is just another route, much in the same way as the GTP was an alternative option.  Personally I much prefer the idea of School Direct as I'll be in school from day one, getting involved in school life but still gaining the PGCE qualification preferred by some schools and often required for teaching abroad.  I understand that taking part in School Direct this year is taking a big step into the unknown, for example my provider is yet to 100% finalise the structure of the course, but I find this exciting.

Taking this step into the unknown means that preparation is difficult.  I've got myself a stack of books and am reading my way through them.  I'm also trying to follow as many blogs and reading other articles on education as I'm realising how fast things are changing and the importance of keeping ahead of the times.  I've also started some observation and spent two days in an all boys grammar school this week which was really interesting as it was different to anything I've been in before.  I've got a week lined up in a Primary school which is compulsory before beginning my PGCE and I've arranged to spend a week in an MFL department back home.  Other than that preparations are generally all paperwork- I've had application forms to fill in from my school, a DBS check to pay for and a bit more reading!

Anyone else stepping into the School Direct unknown?  Join the TES Community forum here.   Get in touch with me on Twitter @BexNobes or via the group.  Really looking forward to talking to more trainees-to-be!

Why study languages? Three minutes to convince 6th formers to study MFL. #3mins2MFL

This week I've got myself involved in a Speedy Networking event where some students from my university are going to a local high school to 'sell' their course speed-dating style.  I don't know a huge amount about the event, at the moment I'm not sure if it will be going ahead as there hasn't been that much interest from students wanting to get involved.  I hope it does go ahead as it sounds like a good event but clearly will only be successful with a good selection of courses represented.  Anyway, this has got me thinking about how to 'sell' the study of languages in only three minutes.


I've mentioned how useful Twitter has been for me before and so it was my first port of call for inspiration.  Firstly I really appreciate tweeters like @speak2future @thirdyearabroad @TESNewTeachers and @MFLSunderland retweeting my request as it helped me get a few more responses.  I asked Twitter users:

Here are just a selection of the reasons I was given.
Employability and job prospects:

I went through these with the other languages students that are going to be coming to the event, trying to work out how we could use them our in three minutes.  All being final year students we were particularly interested in the tweets to do with employability and were really interested to see that language graduates were something like the 7th most employable.  Of the three of us, two are going into teaching in the UK and one to teach English in France and from our experience of the job market outside of Education we've found that as much as languages are sought after, these are in combination with other things.  For example, marketing graduates with knowledge of French or economics graduates with knowledge of German.  One of the three of us has joint honours with Maths and we agreed that maybe in hindsight taking joint honours with something outside of the languages department may have placed us in a better position.  That said it really depends on what university you go to and what you're intending on doing afterwards as some universities place a lot of focus on language and translation, as opposed to our course which has a greater emphasis on 'culture', politics, literature, history etc.  Just recently the British Chamber of Commerce highlighted the need for more linguists in the UK, here.  In terms of what we take from this for our #3mins2MFL we decided that we need to highlight that there are a range of opportunities out there for brits that speak another language, and not just for those that want to go and live abroad as some students might expect.  An example I like to use is that last summer I worked at a London airport and spoke Spanish every single shift.

Experience and opportunity:

We were unanimous that the year abroad is a vital part of a languages degree and is a great reason to study languages.  The experience of the year abroad is different for everyone, especially due to the variety of things that you can do for the year, but we all agreed that we got something from it.  The year abroad is something quite unique to the languages degree in the UK, students from other disciplines can take sandwich years or study abroad but their options are not as wide as language students who don't have the same linguistic barriers.  Year abroad students studying languages can study at a university, teach English or even find a work placement, there are plenty of opportunities out there.  There is a lot more about this on Third Year Abroad, especially their Graduate Case Studies.

Skills:

 This tweet comes from someone that I've studied with for the last 4 years, she has already headed off into the 'real world' and started work in a job that isn't directly related to her degree subject.  I'm sure she won't mind that I'm using her has a great example of the transferable skills that you gain from a languages degree as she highlights herself in the tweet.  Communication is just one of those skills, recently when re-doing my CV I identified some more which are understanding of other ways of working, independence and self-motivation.

Understanding:

I've briefly touched on this one already, learning a language allows you to see things from another perspective, learning about other cultures, different approaches and new ideas.

Of all the tweets I received we particularly liked this one:

In the end we've decided to take a minute each looking at what you study in a languages degree and the host of other courses you can combine with it, the year abroad and finally where your languages can take you.  If it goes ahead maybe I'll blog on it again after the event.

What do you think are the main reasons to learn a language? Tweet @BexNobes with the hashtag #3mins2MFL and let me know.

What happens now?

If my experimenting with the tools on this blog have gone to plan then when you read this my undergraduate exams will be over! At 11.30am 5/6/2013, I finished my degree!  Now that my life isn't full of revision I think I'm going to feel a little lost.  Fear not- I won't be sat around twiddling my thumbs for long, preparation for September is top of the list.


I've bought all the books that I've been told I need, problem is they're all lined up looking pretty on a shelf in Essex... and I won't be joining them until the end of the month.  Being the busy person I am I've had to line up some bits and pieces to fill my time.  Admittedly I don't really know what I've got myself in for with a couple of the things yet!  One is working with year 6 pupils for an afternoon teaching them French and Spanish.  I think the activities etc have been planned already and I'll just be involved in the delivery but it should be fun all the same.  The other activity is working with Secondary students who are coming onto campus to hear about university life and the courses on offer to them.  I'm looking forward to talking to them about studying languages, even if they all say 'oh but everyone speaks English so learning languages is pointless' that'll be something for me to think about in time for September.

The university that will be awarding my PGCE requires me to spend a week in a Primary school and a bit more time in a Secondary school.  I've got a week in a Primary organised back in Essex and I have a booklet full of questions that I need to complete before my 2 week course at the university in August.  As for Secondary, I'm due to spend a couple of days in a grammar up here and a few more back at my old school nearer the end of term.  I was hoping to fit one more school in there, but I just don't think I'll have time!  I've not been given anything to observe in the Secondary classes though, so any suggestions, especially MFL specific ones, are really appreciated!

Whilst I'm on the subject of school experience, I understand why the majority PGCE courses require a certain amount of experience pre-application, but I think that they could be missing out on good applicants.  I've done plenty in the past, from running a French club with another student, leading the lower school band and being an associate form tutor to a year 8/9 form group whilst I was in sixth form, but none of it was recent enough for the requirements of some institutions.   Whilst I've been at university I've worked with Secondary students as a Student Ambassador, running activity days to encourage them to consider Higher Education, but I didn't do this for very long before the closure of the department I was working in.  Other than this I've not had any experience with school students, especially not in the classroom.  I believe that my other experience, with my part time work, helping to run a student society and being an elected representative of the Students' Union is what helped me get onto the School Direct scheme, and helped me prove that I would be capable of teaching.  I understand the reasons behind the requirements but I can't help but think that this means losing out on those that haven't always wanted to teach.

One final thing, for any other School Direct 2013 participants, having seen the lack of a forum covering this area on the new TES Community pages I decided to start one up, you can find the page here: http://community.tes.co.uk/school_direct_2013/default.aspx so please come along and join us.  We're hoping that the forum will be a good support network to share problems and ideas come September.

I tweet with the username @BexNobes and I'd love to hear from you if you're reading the blog.