Maybe not, Emma, but it is a fact of life.

Just a thought, but a couple of years prectice critiquing on WW should count for something - probably worth adding to the CV.

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-oops, ignore prectice

I'm not sure it overrides the need for a teaching track-record, and/or a qualification, and I don't think it should, either.

I agree. I wouldn't know where to begin teaching CW. I was thinking that all I could do was a kind of 'well, this is how I do it...' but actually I don't think I could manage that. I think it would be selling the students short if the teacher hadn't had some teaching training.

I think it would be selling the students short if the teacher hadn't had some teaching training.

I don't think anyone should let that put them off. I assume the students are 16 and older, and have chosen to do this course. They are a lot easier to teach than young teens and pre-teens. A large part of it is just being confident in front of a classful of strangers - and teacher training courses rarely teach you that bit; it comes with experience.

Well, I sort of agree with NMott ... up to a point. Sure, any teacher needs to learn by experience (if not, they need to find some other way of making a living). But having taught for 13 years in FE, with students mostly 16-19, I can't say that they necessarily want to be there and co-operate with you. It depends on so many factors. And to be honest, without training, and the support of experienced colleagues in my first year after my Cert Ed, I think I would have sunk without trace. Training gives you a chance to reflect on what you're up to ... why you want to do this ... and it should give you a wide variety of experience, and strategies to cope with the hurly-burly of it all.

Some people are naturals at it, of course, like any art. But most of us need a wee bit of 'tweaking'.

Jim

Besides, you want to do the best for the students. You know more than they do, technically, but you want to know how to get it across most effectively.

Experience is good, but it takes too long. You wouldn't keep connecting wires in a plug until you hit upon the right combination by chance, would you?

The plug would be easier, though. At least the wires wouldn't get restive and call you a rotten electrician.

Sheila

Friends who had done teacher training courses say their experience of classroom situations has been standing in front of the whiteboard while their colleagues throw spit balls at them
The rest of their experience has involved placement in various schools, which was throwing them in the deep end.

When all's said & done, this post is just one day a week.

Yes, you are right, Naomi. Anyone could cope with one day's 'hurly-burly'.

I've forgotten how to put in those smileys, but Jim's expression made me laugh.

I admire those charismatic teachers declaiming from desk-tops like Robin Williams in 'Dead Poets' Society, or Michelle Ffeiffer teaching karate moves to tame her street-wise class. Did they ever flag and resort less energetic methods?

Maybe I could learn one or two qigong moves- that's the gentler stuff elderly Chinese do in the mornings.


Sheila

Shiela, I now have the calming image of you leading a number of students in qigong moves while quoting Jane Austen and asking for similies and opening lines. I would love! to be in a class like that.

I was in a fiction writing class last year at Goldsmiths where the teacher made us close our eyes and visualise things at the start of every session. It was always something rural, like trees or sunsets, so I wasn't very good at it.

Come to think of it, I decided to concentrate on non-fiction writing shortly after that. Maybe qigong would have worked for me.


Sheila

As I said: anyone who takes this job will find that the course has been meticulously planned and the course materials/assignments will be first-class. Neil Nixon knows what he's doing.

Jim

Yes, I think teaching these courses is a very different proposition if the assignments and so on are all worked out for you - that's the thing that I, as a beginner teacher, would find most daunting. In the general way, I'm sure it's true that experience is all, but what and how to prepare seems to me something you can learn on a course, as are some strategies for dealing with the common problems - no one's done the reading, the student who won't shut up, etc. etc.

Emma

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Meant to say, I'm sure that you can have some experience from being taught, but if the subject you're teaching is one you never learnt in that form, then you're lacking that...

Hmm, I think putting critiqueing on here on a CV would not be a fab idea, I have to say.

If you're a site expert, that's different, but just as a member? I can't see any value in it, I'm afraid.

but if the subject you're teaching is one you never learnt in that form, then you're lacking that...

Emma, this reminds me of something in one of those in-service training courses I did just before I left FE. I'm not sure.

Teaching theories/styles/ methods seem to change every few months anyway, but in my experience you more or less grow into what works for you. Unfortunately all the in-service training never really helps you with the nitty-gritty and trying to relate the new jargon to class-room practice and understand the evaluation forms takes up quite a lot of energy. It did with me, anyway.


Sheila

Yes, I'm sure you do find that you Just Do It perfectly well, quite often. But if I were teaching undergrads CW, for instance, then I'd really be feeling my way about what works and at what level, because I didn't have any formal CW teaching until my MPhil, which was a much higher level and wasn't a taught course anyway...

Emma

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And yes, it's a real struggle to fit the jargon to any experience in the classroom - some of it might as well be Greek!

Yes, I agree that tutorial-style teaching with people who know they want to be writers is quite a different proposition from a whole class of seventeen year olds who are giving it a go to see if it suits them or because it sounds less onerous than studying texts.

I suppose that if you do the HE teacher training, though, you'd get the chance to look in on some classes and even do some practice teaching blocks to get you started.

I've attended quite a few adult CW classes, but apart from the Goldsmiths one I did last year I didn't have to produce a portfolio of work.

The Journalism courses were tougher, possibly because the writing formats were less familiar and more varied and the coursework more demanding.

They all felt very different from FE classes. For a start, the teacher was sitting down and we all sat round a big table in a circle.

Sheila