Highlights of my first week as an NQT

Teaching the Chain, Product and Quotient Rule to Y12 and watching them collaborate and teach each other, only needing me for the really tricky stuff!

Teaching surds to Y9 and throwing in some lovely surd manipulation problems (c/o Don Steward) that required the use of algebra and Pythagoras' theorem :-)

Finally, engaging some of my year 7s (gradient and intercept of a straight line) and year 10s (sine and cosine rules). Still not quite got the climate for learning exactly as I'd like it - hopefully having my own sets from the start of the school year will help with that!

I also updated my email signature today, from Trainee Teacher of Maths to Teacher of Maths :-)

food for thought for teachers new and old

I am the decisive element in the classroom.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis

will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or dehumanised

(From Haim Ginott's book 'Teacher and Child')

reality bites

Well, my PGCE course officially ended yesterday.

It was all a little bit underwhelming if I'm being honest...Not like when I got the results of my finals (a lifetime ago, back in 1988!) and I had my graduation and a long summer holiday ahead of me! Instead, I'm back in my final placement (and NQT) school for the next two weeks, teaching Y7 (straight line graphs), Y9 (surds), Y10 (sine and cosine rule) and Y12 (exponentials and natural logs) and hopefully meeting the Y9s who will be my tutor group from September...

Welcome to mynqtyear blog

Welcome to my first blog as an NQT...Indeed my first blog full stop.

I'm going to use this blog to share my experiences of being an NQT.

This time last year I was 27 years into a career as a Civil Servant and was desperate to find out whether my application for voluntary redundancy had been accepted, so that I could scratch the itch which my desire to teach maths in secondary schools had become. Today I presented my e-portfolio to my subject tutor and was confirmed as having passed my PGCE so I'm now a rookie teacher!!

Watch this space to find out more about my NQT year.

That's all for today - I have some celebrating to do!

x