Teaching & Learning Conference

It has been a while since I posted here. I haven't forgotten about it, I just haven't really had anything to write home about. Except the time I spent at home, that is, which was fantastic and I made sure it was a real break from anything teaching/pgce related - it made me feel a hundred times better. But, I'm not sure ignoring the pgce really counts as a positive of a pgce year lol. That might be clutching at straws lol...

If I were to find a recent positive, it would have to be one connected to a negative. The past week and a half have taken the form of a 'Teaching & Learning Conference'. In real terms, that meant lots of lectures and long seminars with a mixture of academics, Geneva-international, secondary and primary pgce students. The conference itself was a bit of a drag. A lot of the topics covered seemed very removed from anything 'real' or applicable to the classroom - the theory was so detached from actual teaching. Furthermore, the people in my seminar group were very opinionated, rather aggressive and pretty arrogant. Often, our seminars would descend into shouting matches or confrontations. Given my nature, I quite literally sat in the corner and kept out of it. I have no desire to get involved in heated debates with people who are determined to look down on primary pgce students. A lot of people genuinely seem to believe we - primary teachers/pgce students - sit around all day colouring in. Some of the secondary pgce students kept going on and on about GCSE results and pressures they are under. I get that. However, primary teachers are also under a lot of pressure and we are responsible for the entire education of approximately 30 children for a full 12 months - in every subject, including ones that we are perhaps uncomfortable with. Furthermore, we are laying the foundations upon which secondary teachers rely. We have to overcome the problems faced by children who struggle to hold a pencil, let alone write with it. The idea that we are 'lesser' than secondary teachers grated, I must say...

However, being positive - as I promised I would be - the conference made me appreciate the course I am actually on. The 85-ish of us on the primary pgce are all pretty open and friendly. You can talk to anyone and we all support each other, as much as we can. We are not divided. Similarly, the lectures we had made me appreciate the lecturers we normally have and the forms our classes take. Whether I'll still be so keen on my course when I am running around in yet another 2-hour active PE session remains to be seen, but for now, I am definitely convinced that the grass is not greener on the other side, rather the grass is most certainly greener on the course I am actually on. :)

Now to go work on two 5,000 word MA-level assignments and finish my planning for placement, so it can be signed off this week. :)