During this course I am being a ridiculous girly swot (yes I watched a lot of Young Ones as a teenager). I am doing a lot of work for this course. I am making myself aware of the requirements of the course. I am keeping on top of the admin. I am doing as much of the preparatory reading as possible. I am doing extra reading when possible. I am hassling my tutors for extra help, guidance and clarity on the work being done.
This must be both irritating and reassuring for my colleagues and for the tutoring staff. My colleagues probably do get annoyed with me for being a ridiculous girly swot but then on the other hand they know they can ask me if they have a question or confusion. And I like to think that staff are relieved that I am putting in the effort, even though they probably do get somewhat fed up with me. (One of my colleagues thinks that one of my tutors is quite scared of me and reads all my emails because he’s too frightened not to (I don’t think this is true, I think he reads my emails because he’s diligent and fundamentally interested in doing his job well).) š
Basically, I am here so that I can be a better teacher. This course is structured so that I can become a better teacher. But the course structure can only help me and guide me. I have to do all the hard work myself. Having a strong desire to become a better teacher is a sufficient, though not necessary condition for passing this course.
As I do things that make me better, I pass various parts of the course. Some others on the course are only thinking about passing the course components. They see each task as a hoop to jump through. They see the course work as being completely separate from the practice of teaching. And the more they do this, the less effort they put in to the course components and the less value they derive from them. This further reinforces their view that the course components are valueless hoops to jump through.
There are others on this course who are working as hard or harder than I am. And the amount of work that we are each putting in is not necessarily an indication of how suited we each are to working in a classroom or to how successful we will ultimately become as secondary teachers.
But one thing that has struck me is that there is only so much that the tutoring staff can do for us. The rest we have to do for ourselves. It is up to us to take responsibility for our own learning and our own professional development. This is true not just for my colleagues on this course. It is also true for my students as well. And perhaps the greatest thing that we as educators can do, is to teach our students how to take responsibility for their own learning.