Catch up!

I have been neglecting my blog for a long time now and I feel guilty! So I thought I would take out some time and write up a catch up of the past few weeks and what has been happening.

The first thing I want to talk about is how exciting it is to be doing my placement at my local primary school! It's been so insightful and has definitely been such an eye opening experience and I have only been there for two weeks. The reason I am doing this is because I have quite a few careers which interest me and I thought the best way to get an idea of where I want to head down is by getting a taste of different jobs. So, first on my list was primary school teacher - now this has been my firm choice of career for the past few years now so I always knew I would want to get experience in a classroom, BUT! Towards the end of first year at university, I started getting other ideas and was thinking about different jobs.

Anyway, more on my placement - I chose a placement module for my second year so it was essential for me to be getting some experience and so I chose a primary school. It was quite a long process; I think it took me a good two months to get everything sorted (who would have thought?) I had an informal meeting talking about what I wanted to do in the future and what I hope to get out of this experience, I had to apply for a DBS - this was what took a while, but after a few weeks of waiting, it was made clear that I was not a convict or a vigilante! - And then I was good to go. I am in a year 3 classroom and I have to say, it has been such a valuable experience. The teacher is amazing; she is understanding and really wants me to get the most out of this placement. It's almost like being behind the scenes of a movie, you see it on screen but when you actually look at the process of the whole thing, it's completely different. I get to (obviously) work with the children, go into the staff room - now that was surreal, when I was at school I always use to think the staff room was a magical place where the teachers went to have fun, now I realise it is a magical place made of caffeine. That morning coffee/tea is a blessing - I get to talk to the teachers about their experiences and it's helpful to understand that there is a lot of hard work involved and that weekends consist of copious amounts of tea and marking. This experience is for me to understand what goes into becoming a primary school teacher - I have come to learn that you have to be extremely passionate about this job, you can't float about and it is trying, when you have 30 children asking 50 questions in the space of 2 minutes, it is exhausting. I think at the end of this placement, I will have a firm idea of whether this is the route I want to go down but for the time being, I am enjoying being behind the scenes.