Week 12- Professional

This week I started my five week placement in a local school. The classes I will observe are grade 1 and 6 which are the age equivalent of our year 4 and 9. The grade 6 class is interesting because I will not teach children of this age and have no prior experience of secondary school teaching. The grade 1 class have not yet learned English and this is very frustrating when we want to communicate with each other and don’t know the right words.

Throughout this first week I have been thinking about how I can compare these classes with year groups at home. I am not sure if grade one should be compared with our year 1 or year 4 or are they even comparable at all?

One of the first things I noticed was that the children interact with a lot of adults. In grade 1 there is a permanent class teacher and she is supported by at least 3 other adults at various times throughout the week. There is also a special needs teacher who helps with the class on certain days and they go to specialised music and PE teachers. This means the children experience a high level of support and can work in smaller groups more often so getting more one to one contact than we can give the children in our classes. I think this level of support can only be good for a child’s development, both academic and emotional.

It is also a common occurrence for parents to attend school with their children in order to observe what they do with their day and I have met 1 parent already and will meet a grandparent next week. I really like the practice of parents observing what their children are doing in school. I think it helps them understand how and why teachers do what they do. Also, from experience when I ask my children what they did in school the answer is often ‘nothing’ which in the past has led me to wonder if they are actually doing nothing or if they just don’t understand what it is they are learning. The open door policy also creates a high level of trust between the teacher and the parent as nothing is hidden from view.

I am not sure this practice could ever work in Northern Ireland because we are not used to it. I do hope that when I am a practising teacher the parents of the children in my class will feel that I am approachable and will feel able to ask me any questions they have concerning the education of their child. This is because I think the relationship between a teacher and parent is important for the successful progression of the child.