My second week of placement! Guess what I did yesterday? I gave my students a real dressing down. It was only a one hour lesson but it took 20 minutes to get everyone’s attention.  I got so mad and yet I dared raise my voice at them, if these had been my kids, I was sure my voice would have been an octave high!  I sat down without saying a word and waited for about 5 minutes until they finally realised what had happened.  I told them I had spent all night the previous evening preparing for the lessons today and they could see how thick my file was.  Although they did apologise, I could not contain myself and told them I wanted to set my ground rules from now on.  I warned them that if from now on they tried to talk over me or ignored or interrupted my lessons, they could go and see the Head to ask permission to leave the class.  It wouldn’t be an issue for me!  They all looked very guilty except for one girl - there always has to be one!   She said, “We never learn anything during this lesson with Laura!”  My reply to that was, “I’m not Laura and this is my lesson. How would you know that you aren’t going to learn anything when you haven’t even given me a chance?”.  I turned and looked at another person and asked, “What did you learn this morning?”  His answer was so positive that the girl had to shut up!

 I don’t seem to have many problems with the teaching nor with any other preparation work.  It is always to do with the students or should I rephrase that – with the ‘badly behaved students’.  I am really enjoying my teaching time at Newport Coleg even though I have a lot of work to do.  I spent almost all Sunday doing the Scheme of Work for the tutor at Coleg, but he didn’t even have time to look at it.  Everyone in the Coleg has so much work to do that they hardly have time to stop and discuss anything with me.  I have to work out everything by myself and I am so afraid to interrupt anyone as I feel guilty.  I am supposed to be a teacher myself so I should be able to work things out.  My real concern is the marking because there are no detailed criteria to follow and it is up to the individual tutor which in this case is ‘me’!