summer institute – A Teacher in the making

When it comes to developing my understanding of teaching, I feel very motivated. This motivation comes from a drive inside of me – I want to be a fantastic teacher and do all that I can to ensure I am an effective teacher and that my pupils learn effectively during my lessons. My motivation for learning from home, however, is currently lacking.

Now, I’m not saying that I am not engaged with, or interested in the content I am learning – I am very engaged and interested in the content, in fact, I can’t wait to continue along this learning path over the next three weeks and over my teaching career. I am looking forward to implementing all of the skills and knowledge I have already developed, and will continue to develop this summer and I can’t wait to see how I teach my pupils in September.

But right now, the ‘struggle is real’ (I think that is a phrase used on the internet at the moment but I have no idea it’s source.) A mixture of tiredness, lack of social contact, the pandemic that is going on around us, straining at a screen and probably some cognitive overload is what I believe to be the cause of my lack of motivation.

Lets pick apart some of those points in more detail.

➤ Tiredness – this is something to be expected when participating in an intense course that prepares you for teaching. I am not surprised that I am feeling tired, especially as I get towards the end of a week – that weekend break is due and I am looking forward to switching off and resetting. It is very important that we take these weekend breaks and allow ourselves time to absorb and reflect on the weeks learning, without engaging in more content. Our well-being is very important and we have to make time for the ‘recovery’ part of our regulatory system.

Recovery allows us to: recharge our battery; pause and see the bigger picture; think creatively; build connections with people and it triggers a break. The recovery system slows us down and is very important for our wellbeing and in turn our energy levels and our ability to engage with our ‘Drive’ – which helps motivate us! I find it particularly interesting that I have listed ‘lack of social contact’ as one of the reasons for my lack of motivation. As humans, being able to make social connections is very important for our wellbeing.

➤ Lack of social contact – As we all know, humans are often social animals and the ‘recovery’ part of our regulatory system is linked to building social relationships and having social interactions. It is not surprising that a lack of social interaction has had a detrimental effect on my motivation. Last week (week 1 of Summer Institute) was much more social – we had the opening ceremony and we also had a group meeting with our Development Lead, both our live Seminar and practice group, as well as all of our BCU lectures. We were all new to the course, spending lots of time building networking groups and engaging with others, and while this is still the case, I think tiredness has overcome a lot of us – sometimes socialising can be tiresome.

However tiresome it might be, I think it is very important for us to continue to build on these networks, especially in the current Covid-19 climate, where some people may have been isolating this entire time (thank god for my my partner, I would have really struggled being on my own all of this time!) Next week, in an attempt to change this lack of social connection, I am arranging a group meeting on zoom for our development lead group on Monday and on Tuesday (both of these days are completely self-directed work, and can be quite heavy.) The idea behind these 30 minute meetings is to create a closer support network where we can: see & hear each other (much more personal than text); discuss any difficulties we’ve had with the content; discuss our wellbeing and just have a chat in general. I am hoping that these meetings will help motivate me and others in the group who may be struggling, or feeling overwhelmed.

➤ Staring at a screen – the pandemic has made screen staring a much more common factor in our every day lives. I realise that we spend a lot of time looking at screens anyway, it’s 2020 and technology is present in every aspect of our lives, but continuously staring at a screen can have a detrimental affect on concentration, wellbeing and physical health (oh I do love those headaches.) So while I know I still need to engage with the content of Summer Institute (which is all online), moving forward I am going to ensure I take more screen breaks. If I have a reflection to do, I’ll spend half an hour jotting ideas down in my notebook whilst away from my screen. I hope that actively taking extra screen breaks will help.

➤ Cognitive overload – something I have learned a lot about in the lead up to, and during Summer Institute. Our working memory is small and can only manage a certain amount of new information before it is overloaded. There is a lot of content to cover during summer institute and while it is important for me to engage with and absorb this information, I need to follow the various teaching techniques we’ve been learning about: present information in small steps; dual coding; spaced practice and retrieval practice, are which are great strategies for learning and something I can actively do to help reduce my cognitive overload and promote more effective learning.

As the week comes to an end, I am very excited to enjoy the weekend and take a well deserved screen break. I will reflect on the weeks learning and enjoy a lie in. I am excited to start a new week, especially now that we have our extra meetings planned on zoom. Hopefully these meetings will help us to overcome any motivational issues we may be experiencing on this home-learning journey.

Hope you are all managing your workload well.

R

As Teach First 2020 Summer Institute is just around the corner (we start on Monday) I have been spending a lot of my ‘spare’ time (when I say spare time, I mean time outside of my full-time job – luckily I finished this job on Wednesday) over the past couple of weeks preparing.

Unsurprisingly we were given a reading list to familiarise ourselves with prior to beginning the five week summer course. I am not the best at distinguishing between whether a reading list is something we need to just be somewhat comfortable with, or whether we’re expected to have read it all. I always opt for the latter – better to be over-prepared than under-prepared in my opinion.

The reading list included six fantastic texts, which I have found myself fully engaged in! Me and my partner have been getting into a better routine (up at 6-6:30am) and the first couple of hours of my day have been spent listening to instrumental jazz (my favourite music for concentration) and spending time engaging in and enjoying the reading list.

Teach Like a Champion (TLaC) is one of the texts on the reading list, and something I have thoroughly enjoyed reading (and watching). It has been challenging to imagine myself doing some of the techniques mentioned in the book, as I have no experience in schools – the addition of videos makes it so much easier to do this. While this book was written and is mainly based off of American schools, I can see how many of the techniques can be used in schools here, to help engage pupils and create a fantastic, supportive and safe working environment for pupils of all ages.

I will be teaching primary, lower KS2 and I am incredibly excited and interested to see how I implement these techniques in my classroom from day one. Before even starting my Summer Institute course, I already know some of my favourite techniques in the book. ‘Threshold’, ‘Cold Call’ and ‘Plan for Error’ are three of the many techniques that stand out to me. I can see myself creating my classroom culture from day one and implementing these techniques in one way or another.

Today I watched the Chartered College recent Webinar with Doug Lemov where he talks about the importance of “Building a Thriving Classroom Culture” and draws upon some of his favourite techniques from the book. During the webinar, he narrates videos of some of the techniques being used in schools. The addition of the narration really helped give context to these techniques and as an inexperienced future trainee teacher, this is very helpful. View the webinar here. (You’ll need an account, for student teachers it’s free!)

Other papers we have been asked to familiarise ourselves with look at research based approaches that look at the science and psychology behind how people learn and they were truly fascinating! As a person who feels her memory of childhood/early adulthood is lacking, I was interested to learn about our ‘working memory’ and our ‘long-term memory’ and how a lot of what we do is just information from our long-term memory. I find myself interested in finding ways to tap into this more to help influence my teaching. I also found that, when reading these articles alongside TLaC, I was able to find some of the scientific research that backs up the techniques in the book. As teachers, we need to use research based approaches (whether this research is field based, like TLaC, or scientific based) we cannot be expected to teach successfully and create the best environment for learning without using these research based approaches.

I love getting stuck in to research, it was always one of my strong points when studying my BA and MA in Photography. Learning the theories, techniques and reasoning behind photography and Artist’s work was something that fascinated me. (This could be because I am a inquisitive person, but I’d like to think being inquisitive is merely just showing interest in other people.) I’m extremely excited to start to develop a more critical understanding of the research I have done around teaching, and I can not wait to engage in more. (Goodness knows there is a lot of research on teaching out there). I need to be sure to find the right research and not be overwhelmed by the masses that are out there. Another technique I put down to my previous degrees’ is my understanding of the importance of being very specific with the research you carry out. Don’t just search generic terms, be specific, and use the experts you already have access to (be it tutors, mentors or colleagues) because they already know and practice a lot of the theories and techniques you need to learn – use them to your advantage! I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to point you in the right direction.

It’s crazy to think that my official journey as a trainee teacher begins in less than two days. It feels like a very long-time coming, and I feel terrified, excited, thrilled and privileged to be given this opportunity to help give education a brighter future in the UK. I’m excited to start my career as a teacher, one I hope to stick with for the foreseeable future.

Bring on Teach First Summer Institute 2020. While it may be virtual, I’m sure it will be just as challenging, enthralling and fascinating as it normally is.

I’ll check in again soon, take care.