Unit X | Educator Key Blog Post 3

From the Educator Unit, I have learnt several things. Some I have gone into depths of researching and some have left me asking questions. Relating this back to my practice, I would say that I have always use the public audience to sell/ aim my work. I still feel the same about why I do this; it brings everyone together and it is not just one person’s work – shared work. I really have enjoyed this Unit as it has allowed me to be myself and learn many things. It has also given me the assurance that this is what I want to do; work with young people.

There are millions of ways of learning and teaching. One specific way that I’ve found a new way of learning is; doodling or playing with practice while listening to someone speak be it a tutor, friend or stranger. From experience, teachers have always told me off for doing these things while they were teaching. Therefore, this is why we were first set to discuss the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ teachers that we had. From research, people discussed that in order to find your ‘teaching style’ you would have to reflect on your own experience and see what worked and what did not.

I hoped that the collaborative work would have been successful however, it was the complete opposite. One out of the three workshops have only been successful where planning as a team worked. I had never experience collaborative work to be let down before so may be this is why I was unable to pick up the pieces and carry on. This is defiantly something that I will need to work on as not everything will out while teaching or giving out a workshop in the future. So what I need to do is have a backup plan at all times. Another skill that needs improving is the idea planning a workshop. I need to adapt lessons to the time limits and abilities of individuals.

At the beginning of the unit, I was unsure about several things about what to after graduating. Now that it has come to the end of the Educator Programme, I feel like I have a set mind on what I want to do, need to do and how to get where I need to be. My ambitions for the future now is to defiantly do several more workshops to get used to the atmosphere and then do a PGCE. What I am still unsure of is what age group I would like to teach in. However, hopefully I get the gist of it in my third year of my degree.

Public Debate. (2016). unknown. Last accessed 12/05/16. Available: https://community.tes.com/threads/how-would-you-deal-with-sen-and-disability-in-the-classroom.733129/#post-11588487  

Unit X | Week Seven 10/05/16

After several attempt to communicate with my group, my group failed to do so. Due to lack of pure laziness and immaturity of the individuals in my group apart from one, no one offered any help what so ever towards our workshop at the school placement. Therefore, we were left to assist another group in their workshop. This experience has left me immensely irritated as me and my friend felt like we had planned a group year 7’s workshop for a whole day ourselves and also that we bought all the materials for no reason. One main issue that had really bothered me was that the others were only concerned about their grades whereas I wanted create memories for the children as chees as it may sound.

Due to this unforeseen circumstance, we were unable to go ahead with our planned workshop. Therefore, we assisted another group and the images below was their outcome.

This workshop was planned for a 16 year 9’s that were skilled in art. The theme for this workshop was about recycling. The planning and timing went really well with this group as they had a team leader who called time and moved everyone around to each station. Their idea was to create a weave with plastic, threads, clothes and dye. Towards the end when they came together, they looked more as dream catchers and some students chose to take their one home.

Unit X | Week 8 12/05/16

So Unit X - Educator programme, we all decided to end it with a workshop welcoming people to come into our studio and make pompoms in the Unit X show! Along with other activities in the room like tower building with marshmallows an stick, blind drawing and the most popular one; throwing darts at balloons filled with paint on a canvas. I feel like this went really well as the planning was effective and everyone felt welcome and comfortable in the workshop. The pompom activity was more of a relaxing and therapeutic exercise and it felt like being a kid again! This is something that I would consider teaching in the future.

 

 

Unit X | Week Six 03/05/16

Last week I requested to work with children with special needs. Therefore, I was placed in three different aged groups who all had different learning abilities; three year 8’s with one teacher, four year 9 student with one teacher. Then I moved to another classroom that consisted of around 20 children with four teachers/ supervisors. Every group was small and compact so that everyone felt comfortable enough to communicate and share ideas however if it was in a larger scaled group, these student would not learn effectively.

This is an image of the lessons that year 7’s were in. the teacher provided materials that were simple but fun to use as the student could eat the marshmallows in the end!