My PGCE Journey

Good morning, good evening, it’s been a minute (or it hasn’t, I feel inspired so I am binge writing a load of stuff so I’m not sure when this is getting posted lol). This is going to be a series kinda thing where essentially I’m going to be talking about my experience throughout my PGCE. If you don’t know, a PGCE is the Post Graduate Certificate of Education, which can be completed by someone who already has an undergrad degree. By typing this, I’ll try giving tips, reflect on what I’m up to and just have a writing session unloading, I’m excited to read over this years in the future. (for you curious people, I'm doing mine at Manchester Metropolitan University)

So the PGCE entails of 4 weeks in university where you essentially get taught what you need to be taught in order to teach. This includes loads of sessions on core subjects and some on foundation subjects. There were also seminars and lectures on stuff like phonics, assessment, behaviour management, working with adults etc. Do I find what I’m being taught effective? To an extent, I can hand on heart say that I fully prefer being taught in a lecture than in a seminar. During the seminars, it’s just chatting about what we’ve been told in the lecture or a reading or something, and I don’t like that. I find it almost like a waste of time, as interesting as it is to listen to other people’s experiences, it isn’t always necessary, if that makes sense. Maybe if it’s an hour seminar, it’s cool because things are kept nice and concise, any longer, it bores me and becomes awfully repetitive.

After these 4 weeks, there are 15 weeks on the first placement, where you build up your teaching percentage up to 60%, during these 15 weeks, you are in uni for a couple of days for assignments and submissions and such. You have winter break and what not, and then placement A ends, and placement B begins until the end of June-ish.

At this moment in time, I’m about 3 weeks into the course, next week starts the 4th and final week of the university block and then the real stress begins. So far, I’ve had a lot of fun, meeting new people and learning things all over again. And just getting back into a routine of things. I am yet to feel an ounce of stress, but I know that in about 2 weeks I’ll probably be saying a completely different thing. I’ve felt ever so slightly overwhelmed because it’s been a very content heavy few weeks, but it’s all good. A good tip honestly, is trying to stay on top of things, keep post it notes with your notebooks and planners so you can add any readings or tasks you need to complete all on a brightly coloured note. Another tip is to make sure you have a to do list, the list will elongate quickly and start escalating if you don’t write everything down, do this either inside your planner, a separate notebook or on your phone, somewhere you will check!!!!

My next segment on this series will probably be in another month where I’ll be talking about placement and how that’s going, I’ll let you all know how my teaching is going etc etc, so stay tuned my fellow teachers or anyone that’s bothering to read this. Stay safe and stay blessed my huns.