This post is attempting the slightly infeasible task of a summary of about 10 weeks of life in the PGCE student.
Starting at the beginning, it’s a very different atmosphere to an undergraduate degree. I’m not sure whether its the perception, atmosphere or both, but its more focused and intense as you’d expect.
That said, it was a fairly gently introduction to postgraduate life. Its inevitable with anything new that it takes a week or two of admin-type stuff before you get into it.
That was fairly quickly replaced a sense of realisation when we were told that we would be in schools in mere weeks. Despite everyone signing up for the course to spend their whole lives in a school, there really is a feeling of, “what, now?!” about the swiftness of approach. The workload up until this point is fairly minimal, enjoy this!
Going into school is a strange experience, especially if like me, you haven’t much school experience prior to the course. I’m going to avoid going into too much detail as most of it escapes me and I will post more about it seperately. What I will say though, is that if you’re in a school that usually takes on student teachers, you’ll might be suprised by how ambivalent the students will be to your arrival. You might get the odd student asking but on the whole, it’s an order of logic less of an issue that it is for you.
I’m about 6 weeks into my placement now and things are finally “settled”. What I mean by that is, lesson plans aren’t taking longer than the length of the lesson and you spend the lesson itself worrying about the students rather than yourself. It’s a nice feeling to have that mental shift; it allows you to enjoy your experience all the more.