Teacher Training

[Bluesince1979]

There's a lot of shagging goes on - that's why they stay so late after school

Oh i know that.

 

[Fred_Quimby]

In my first year I was having a conversation on the phone. The guy said that he would give me call back and asked when my lunch break was so that he could keep that clear. He was quite taken aback when I said that this was the best. Taking phone calls during your lunch break? Who'd have thought.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

There's a lot of shagging goes on - that's why they stay so late after school

Seriously, knew someone who worked in hospitals, and there really is, according to that person. Just something about hospitals that encourages casual sexual relations, apparently (I'm not talking about patients, obviously, although I have seen flirting between nurses and male patients when I've been hospitalised myself. Most of the time you're too zonked out by whatever's wrong with you to be thinking about shagging, and if you've been operated on, you're smashed by the after-effects of it).

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Think youre getting confused. They just started work back before the kids went back.
Teachers do a shit load of out of school hours. Youd be surprised. The decent hols just about make up for that.

As my mrs always says, if teachers have it so easy … go train to be a teacher

Thank you for pointing that out.
And primary school teachers, if they're conscientious, do a ridiculous amount of preparation. I was not a primary school teacher, so I'm not arguing my own corner, but I've talked about it a lot with my daughter-in-law, who did it for twenty years, and has now got out, due to burn-out.
By the way, primary school teachers now have to spend quite a lot of time talking to parents who sometimes make unreasonable demands. This is outside of their normal working hours. Really don't know if that happens in secondary education that much.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

Because they are going in a day before the kids start. Not sure what people dont understand?
My mrs started work (teacher) on monday, the pupils went back on the tuesday. It wasnt an extra day off for anybody, either way.

Term times are set out well in advance. No parents were hit with “oh by the way , kids arent in monday, its tuesday now” like 2 weeks ago. You can check term times months upon months in advance

Seriously you come across very passive-aggressive. I only enquired as to the nature of the reason for everyone training at the same time (which @Eccles Blue kindly answered for me). I’ve got more questions but don’t think I’ll easily learn anything new here.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

Genuine question but what is the purpose of these inset days at the start of the year? In most companies the staff go on training at different times and have to cover each other’s work so there’s no impact on customers.

Am now four years into retirement but the thing I can remember spending the most time on at this stage of the year was auditing GCSE and A level results.

Those results come out in August, and if a pupil has underperformed, or if the collective results for a specific paper are lower than anticipated, you will have already requested copies of scripts back from the relevant examination board.

So a fair amount of time is then spent with those scripts deciding whether they may have been harshly marked and whether it is worth paying to have them them re-marked by the chief examiner at the board.

One year, for example, we had some very strange results for one particular A level paper (the one I taught as it happened - and I had only been at the school for a year), with pretty much all the candidates getting two grades lower than predicted.

It eventually turned out that the mark scheme was incorrect, as it had been written by a non-specialist in that area of the syllabus. This provides guidance for examiners as to what might be expected in the answers they are reading. Not only that, but the paper itself had been marked by a non-specialist.

Eventually, after this was discovered, the grades all went up dramatically. Am mentioning this because what happened to us that year was not unique. I have known this to happen to other departments as well. And if it is a large one, like English, a lot of work is involved if you set about appealing against the results.

In individual cases the parent pays. In those cases, if the student was close to achieving a higher grade, it is often worth getting a particular script remarked, as a university place or a place in the sixth-form may be at stake.

There is usually also a departmental report to be authored for senior management about the results. Comments on individual/group performances, comparisons with previous years and with predicted results all feature. In a larger department, input from colleagues is required and the beginning of term presents an opportunity for that. Of course, there is such a thing as e-mail, so work will have already commenced on this. But having everyone together in the same room can help.

If you have a new member of the department joining in September, you will probably have met with them at the end of the Summer term and furnished them with schemes of work, lesson plans, textbooks etc.

Sometimes you might have allowed them the scope to design their own schemes of work and lesson plans based on an existing syllabus.

At the start of term you would meet to review the state of play, as well as to induct them into the ways of the department.

Once term begins, there is very little time to share good practice and innovative lesson ideas as you are on a treadmill. The inset days present the best and sometimes the only opportunity for that.

One year, in a small department, the two of us had been teaching A level but didn’t have a sufficient knowledge or understanding of what the other was teaching. So we swapped. I taught his specialism and he taught mine. The reason for doing so was so that if one of us became sick, the other could cover his lessons without too much difficulty. When my colleague suffered a retinal detachment towards the end of the Autumn term, the wisdom of this approach was demonstrated.

So at the start of term, when we decided to do this, we went through queries that had arisen as a consequence of the preparation we had undertaken.

In addition to that, there is the stationery order to check, set lists to go through, classrooms to arrange, and you need to make sure that a sufficient number of textbooks have been purchased and received.

If you are a tutor there will be meetings with the Head of Year to discuss pastoral issues/individual tutees, and with other Heads of Department to talk about issues that affect all of them, and with other departments if you teach more than one subject.

Over and above that, there are sessions where the staff are together as a whole. Often we would be addressed by an outside speaker and introduced to some innovation in educational philosophy and classroom practice, the next big thing, that was meant to revolutionise our teaching.

Here, my sympathies reside very much with parents, as I cannot recall any of this training making much of a difference to my own teaching and resented the time that had to be spent away from the department.

As for the summer itself, a good deal of that is spent reading textbooks, designing courses and preparing notes for them.

It may be assumed that subject knowledge is already set in granite before we enter the classroom, as a consequence of whatever degree we did.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for many subjects and you often end up teaching the unfamiliar. And sometimes, there is no textbook, or the existing ones are not up to snuff.

For example, when new A level courses were introduced in 2016, although we weren’t to know this, for the board we chose no textbook was published until 2018.

I always preferred writing my own course notes anyway, and so was not unduly affected. But half-terms, and the Christmas, Easter and Summer breaks are realistically the only time when you can author material like this.

To give an example, one school that I taught at decided to run the International Baccalaureate alongside A Level. The Philosophy course involved the teaching of a set text. Having studied Chinese philosophy two decades earlier, I opted for the Tao Te Ching.

There was no textbook aimed specifically at IB students. So I effectively had to produce my own. That summer I kept a rough record of how long it took me to do the background reading and writing. It amounted to approximately 180 hours of preparation.

Am not complaining though. It was fascinating to revisit old territory, and the students did really well in the terminal examination.

That was exceptional, though. At a rough guess, I reckon that I more typically did around 80 hours work during a summer break, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Am offering this up simply as an instance of what one teacher got up to during the summer and those inset days. Other teachers and schools probably go about things very differently. But hopefully it at least provides a bit of insight into what we do at this time of the year.

 

[Bluesince1979]

Thank you for pointing that out.
And primary school teachers, if they're conscientious, do a ridiculous amount of preparation. I was not a primary school teacher, so I'm not arguing my own corner, but I've talked about it a lot with my daughter-in-law, who did it for twenty years, and has now got out, due to burn-out.
By the way, primary school teachers now have to spend quite a lot of time talking to parents who sometimes make unreasonable demands. This is outside of their normal working hours. Really don't know if that happens in secondary education that much.

Yeah shes primary.

more are leaving the profession than going in. When more work is piled on and the question is asked “when am i supposed to do that?” Its usually met with a shrug.

By the way, as the mrs says , no one holds a gun to her head to be teacher. She can quit at any time.
But its very much a vocation

 

[Bluesince1979]

Seriously you come across very passive-aggressive. I only enquired as to the nature of the reason for everyone training at the same time (which @Eccles Blue kindly answered for me). I’ve got more questions but don’t think I’ll easily learn anything new here.

Ok no problem

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

To give an example, one school that I taught at decided to run the International Baccalaureate alongside A Level. The Philosophy course involved the teaching of a set text. Having studied Chinese philosophy two decades earlier, I opted for the Tao Te Ching.

There was no textbook aimed specifically at IB students. So I effectively had to produce my own.

A very interesting, nuts-and-bolts, hands-on post.
By the way, you probably didn't intend it, but this section was, to me, quite funny. I had a good laugh anyway. Not getting at you, and I admire your willingness to venture into such territory. Thanks for the (unintentional?) laugh.
By the way, you should have written that textbook. You would probably be the only person qualified to do it…

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

Am now four years into retirement but the thing I can remember spending the most time on at this stage of the year was auditing GCSE and A level results.

Those results come out in August, and if a pupil has underperformed, or if the collective results for a specific paper are lower than anticipated, you will have already requested copies of scripts back from the relevant examination board.

So a fair amount of time is then spent with those scripts deciding whether they may have been harshly marked and whether it is worth paying to have them them re-marked by the chief examiner at the board.

One year, for example, we had some very strange results for one particular A level paper (the one I taught as it happened - and I had only been at the school for a year), with pretty much all the candidates getting two grades lower than predicted.

It eventually turned out that the mark scheme was incorrect, as it had been written by a non-specialist in that area of the syllabus. This provides guidance for examiners as to what might be expected in the answers they are reading. Not only that, but the paper itself had been marked by a non-specialist.

Eventually, after this was discovered, the grades all went up dramatically. Am mentioning this because what happened to us that year was not unique. I have known this to happen to other departments as well. And if it is a large one, like English, a lot of work is involved if you set about appealing against the results.

In individual cases the parent pays. In those cases, if the student was close to achieving a higher grade, it is often worth getting a particular script remarked, as a university place or a place in the sixth-form may be at stake.

There is usually also a departmental report to be authored for senior management about the results. Comments on individual/group performances, comparisons with previous years and with predicted results all feature. In a larger department, input from colleagues is required and the beginning of term presents an opportunity for that. Of course, there is such a thing as e-mail, so work will have already commenced on this. But having everyone together in the same room can help.

If you have a new member of the department joining in September, you will probably have met with them at the end of the Summer term and furnished them with schemes of work, lesson plans, textbooks etc.

Sometimes you might have allowed them the scope to design their own schemes of work and lesson plans based on an existing syllabus.

At the start of term you would meet to review the state of play, as well as to induct them into the ways of the department.

Once term begins, there is very little time to share good practice and innovative lesson ideas as you are on a treadmill. The inset days present the best and sometimes the only opportunity for that.

One year, in a small department, the two of us had been teaching A level but didn’t have a sufficient knowledge or understanding of what the other was teaching. So we swapped. I taught his specialism and he taught mine. The reason for doing so was so that if one of us became sick, the other could cover his lessons without too much difficulty. When my colleague suffered a retinal detachment towards the end of the Autumn term, the wisdom of this approach was demonstrated.

So at the start of term, when we decided to do this, we went through queries that had arisen as a consequence of the preparation we had undertaken.

In addition to that, there is the stationery order to check, set lists to go through, classrooms to arrange, and you need to make sure that a sufficient number of textbooks have been purchased and received.

If you are a tutor there will be meetings with the Head of Year to discuss pastoral issues/individual tutees, and with other Heads of Department to talk about issues that affect all of them, and with other departments if you teach more than one subject.

Over and above that, there are sessions where the staff are together as a whole. Often we would be addressed by an outside speaker and introduced to some innovation in educational philosophy and classroom practice, the next big thing, that was meant to revolutionise our teaching.

Here, my sympathies reside very much with parents, as I cannot recall any of this training making much of a difference to my own teaching and resented the time that had to be spent away from the department.

As for the summer itself, a good deal of that is spent reading textbooks, designing courses and preparing notes for them.

It may be assumed that subject knowledge is already set in granite before we enter the classroom, as a consequence of whatever degree we did.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for many subjects and you often end up teaching the unfamiliar. And sometimes, there is no textbook, or the existing ones are not up to snuff.

For example, when new A level courses were introduced in 2016, although we weren’t to know this, for the board we chose no textbook was published until 2018.

I always preferred writing my own course notes anyway, and so was not unduly affected. But half-terms, and the Christmas, Easter and Summer breaks are realistically the only time when you can author material like this.

To give an example, one school that I taught at decided to run the International Baccalaureate alongside A Level. The Philosophy course involved the teaching of a set text. Having studied Chinese philosophy two decades earlier, I opted for the Tao Te Ching.

There was no textbook aimed specifically at IB students. So I effectively had to produce my own. That summer I kept a rough record of how long it took me to do the background reading and writing. It amounted to approximately 180 hours of preparation.

Am not complaining though. It was fascinating to revisit old territory, and the students did really well in the terminal examination.

That was exceptional, though. At a rough guess, I reckon that I more typically did around 80 hours work during a summer break, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Am offering this up simply as an instance of what one teacher got up to during the summer and those inset days. Other teachers probably go about things very differently. But hopefully it at least provides a bit of insight into what we do at this time of the year.

Thanks for that Zen, I will read that properly when I get chance but on the face of it I get the sense that teacher training days are for various and varying reasons. I asked my question because I was speaking with a parent yesterday whose child had been at home on Monday and she didn’t know what the extra day was for, so this thread just popped up at the right time.

Having left school myself before Baker days and then inset days, the first thing we knew of them was when our eldest went to school in the early noughties. I think when you’re deep in a career, and terminology is used for a long while, it’s easy to forget that some customs, words and phrases can still be a new thing to those not in the same line of work. We just put up with it at the time but I was always curious as to the reason for them, having not experienced such things during my own education. Plenty of strike days, though!