first week...

...well, it's been stressful but good.

Monday was a training day with my DRB (and inset day in school, but I wasn't there). Basically it involved filling in paperwork for them, a tour of the place and a brief explanation of what was going to happen over the next couple of days. We also had to write a description of another trainee, and then introduce them to all the other trainees. I normally don't do public speaking very well, but I even impressed myself that day and it made me much more confident, which was great.

Tuesday was am in school with the kids. This was great, nice kids, easy work for the first morning and mostly just working with the kids in general and with small groups, and doing some reading. It'll take a while to work out all the little ins and outsof how the school works, the paperwork and all that stuff, but I enjoyedbeing with the kids, and that's the important bit!
Went to my training centre in the afternoon and we had an introduction to the course. We got our first glimpse of our Individual Training Plans which basically just showed when we would be in lectures, and the occasional directive such as 'see Literacy HoD about policies and practice'. I was expecting more guidance on how much observation to do and when to start the first lesson planning etc, but apparently our school mentor is completely in charge of that, so we're to sort that out between us.
On my way home my car broke down. Argghh. Took three hours to get home and I was stressed and exhausted by the end of it. I didn't really feel like I had 'done' much but it's knackering anyway. So much information and so many new things to process!

Wednesday - had to get a fellow trainee to ferry me in. We got to meet all our lecturers for the core subjects, which was interesting and we had some ICT training in the morning (very basic stuff) and voice training in the afternoon, which was great. Nice easy day.

Thursday (today). Late start, didn't need to get in til 11am so I took my sons to school. The youngest clung to me and cried, so started out stressful when it should have been pleasant!
Got my car back - phew - picked up a really really useful booklet called The Bristol Guide which explains rights and responsibilities of teachers in an easy to read manner. I'd recommend it to anyone working in school. Then we met our Lead Mentors/Professional Tutors who we will be working with in the first four weeks investigating various aspects of education.
Everyone had to introduce themselves and say what experience they had. I was the last and it was painfully obvious that I had the least experience. Some people just said they had worked as TA's (and I knew it was more like for months than years) but many people had worked as TA's or unqualified teachers for ages. All I could say was that I was a TA for a couple of months 6 years ago and I had experience from being a parent. I felt utterly inadequate and really could have cried and run away!
We got to talk to our mentors about gathering evidence andhow it all works, which was good, but I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling very panicky and out of my depth.
After lunch (when various other lovely students reassured me and made me feel much better) we met with our school metors and talked about paperwork, standards, timetables etc. I have loads of notes to go back over, but at last I have guidance on organising my evidence (which means to pretty much completely rearrange what I originally set up) so that's good.
Phew, anyway. That's it so far. Knackered every night but going out to the pub tonight to meet some friends and met up with a friend yesterday too.
More soon.