Thoughts from a Trainee

By Sophia Evans, Teach First Trainee in Maths

When I first joined the Teach First programme, I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not teaching would be a profession for me long-term. I had not had any prior experience in teaching and applied to Teach First on a whim, after a friend who was already on the programme suggested it to me. I had in my mind that I would just complete the two-year programme and most likely move out of teaching after that. I was incredibly nervous about starting at WA with only one week of experience in a school during summer institute; I think the best word to describe how I was feeling is clueless.

One of the strengths of WA is the high standard of teaching and I have seen some fantastic teachers demonstrate their craft on many occasions. However, I do feel that this can sometimes be a pitfall. I’m sure my fellow trainees will agree that being surrounded by such high quality teachers is incredible for development, but can also cause issues with confidence and self-esteem. Throughout the first few terms, and I am sure I am not alone with this, I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I could be doing more. This can be quite a burden to carry during your first few months in a profession with minimal experience.

Once I had begun to overcome my growing “imposter syndrome” and realised that I should be just focusing on my own teaching and learning, instead of comparing myself to others, I began to develop my teaching skills further. The team planned lessons that we use in maths already contain good pedagogical strategies but I think that for a while I was just teaching the slides, rather than really thinking about what I was doing, how it links to other areas of maths, and even how the slides could be improved for support and challenge. Taking the leap into editing and sometimes questioning things in the team planned lessons was quite difficult, initially I felt like I didn’t have enough experience to go off-piste. I also started observing colleagues more and would steal and adapt their fantastic ideas. I used a task from one of Ruhina’s Y10 lessons, where students had to construct a house using angle and line bisectors, as one of my observations from my UCL tutor. The lesson went extremely well and I think that it sparked this interest inside of me to try new things in my lessons!

Y10 Construction Task

I have thoroughly enjoyed discussions I have had with various people in the maths department about how and why we teach things the way we do. In particular, my mentor meetings with Tom would often end up with us discussing potential new ways of teaching a particular topic, or the questions we would ask and why it is good to ask them. Training in an environment where you are surrounded by knowledgeable people who enjoy discussing their subject and enjoy conversations about pedagogy has been one of the key factors in my development as a teacher. I feel fortunate to have this opportunity, especially as I have friends teaching in other schools who have certainly had different experiences with their departments. These discussions have helped me develop confidence in my own curriculum knowledge (as someone who didn’t study maths at university this is a big deal) and have also, I think, helped me teach better lessons where I have actually thought about what, how, and why the students are learning.

Having used Google Classroom since September, I felt almost an “expert” compared to my friends in other schools, which also meant that the completely daunting shift to WA Online was not as much of an obstacle as I thought it would be. I actually wrote a “google classroom guide” which was shared with some members of my Teach First maths cohort this year, which I NEVER thought I would be doing. I think that this confidence with utilising technologies has allowed me to become more creative with teaching strategies online, as I didn’t have to worry about the basics, and even led to me giving an INSET training session with Emma and Jojo. 

The switch to teaching online has highlighted to me how much I actually miss the classroom and the students. I believe that the situation of “all being in the same boat” has made some of the students more engaged in my lessons and has given me the opportunity to build stronger relationships with some of them. As part of my module 3 assignment I looked into effective teaching strategies for teaching online and attempted to implement metacognitive strategies into my lessons. If I was not as confident with teaching online, and built relationships with students in that they would be confident to be themselves in online lessons (answering questions and contributing to class discussions), I don’t think I would have been able to really focus on the intervention implementation as I would have been too busy stressing about the IT-side of the online lessons, instead of the content. I thoroughly enjoyed implementing metacognitive strategies, getting students to think about what they know and how they can implement it, and am excited to continue with this in my lessons in September.

I feel incredibly lucky to have spent my training year with you all, and massive shout outs go to the entire maths department (love you all), Divisha for being a great co-tutor to learn from, Ruhina for being the best DOL I could ask for and for Tom, my mentor who, I believe, is one of the main factors for sparking this passion of mine and making me change my mind about teaching long term. I cannot thank you guys enough. 

Here’s to being an NQT next year wahoooooo! Good luck to all the new trainees joining, you guys are very lucky to have WA at your side for your training!