“The most helpful part of being on the programme has to be the support that is always available, I know that come rain or shine if I needed help or support for whatever came my way, I could either contact my RTC or anyone on the FTS team and they would provide the assistance I needed.”
“I was always told at school that if you failed to plan then you planned to fail, and that mantra carries through strong when it comes to teaching. When I first started out, I learnt that no matter how much you can try to prepare for it, behaviour management issues will always arise and that students love to talk. But once you get past that, you uncover why you go into the profession. Being responsible for facilitating so many ‘eureka’ moments is such an enjoyable feeling.
My first month, it felt like all I did was plan, teach, sleep and repeat, where I had little time to do other things. Knowing where to look for quality resources or creating your own took too much time. What helped was being able to talk to my fellow scholars for good sites to look, as well the Lesson Plan Library created by FTS in the Development Zone. So over time, as I gather more proven resources or sources of this, my planning time has slowly begun to decrease.
The FTS programme has helped me so much with settling into my school. I was lucky that the majority of the school visits and observations set up by FTS that I had whilst at university were hosted by the school that I would go on to work at. This gave me huge insights into the school before I started and reduced my transition period since it gave me a little familiarity with the structure of the school and my future department.”