Elizabeth Green - Secondary SCITT trainee 2019/2020
It has been full of support by the whole of the SCITT team; though it is a big teacher training programme, it has felt like a big family.
Elizabeth Green. Secondary SCITT trainee.
Elizabeth Green one of our exceptional SCITT trainees, shares her enthusiasm for teaching and her experience of her training year. We are lucky enough to be able to carry on seeing lots of Elizabeth, she has secured her first teaching job here at Notre Dame High School, where The Sheffield SCITT is based.
Which school have you secured a job?
Notre Dame High School, Sheffield.
What subject will you teach?
Religious Education.
When did you start to apply for jobs?
February 2020, that’s when the RE jobs started popping up within the diocese!
“Take the teacher training course day by day. In teaching, each day will be so different; one day you will think you’ve nailed it and the next day you may feel like you’re back at square one. Ride the teaching wave; enjoy the journey and know that each ‘mistake’ is an opportunity for reflection and progression.”
How have you found your training year with The Sheffield SCITT?
I have loved my training year. It has been wonderful to have two different schools to be mentored in; have the experienced to also go to a primary school after I had done a significant time within a secondary school to see how KS2 will have impacted the Y7 coming to me in September. It has been full of support by the whole of the SCITT team; though it is a big teacher training programme, it has felt like a big family. Getting to see the other trainees every Wednesday and share our weekly stories has been so wonderful and very entertaining.
Personal highlights?
On the last lesson of my assessed Y9 class at my first placement school I was given a handwritten booklet from the class about what they have loved over the 6 week period of me teaching them. They didn’t just include what they liked about me as a teacher but as a person too. This moment was so beautiful to finish my first placement and reinforce why I have gone into teaching- to make a difference in young people’s lives.
What did you find most challenging?
Going to my second placement school which was very different to my first in terms of catchment area; student’s needs; and the distance that I had to travel to get to the school was much further than my first placement. However, I would say that this was the placement to really secure my understanding in how to shift my teaching to cater to a range of student needs e.g. I had two students in my Y10 class who couldn’t speak English and I was there trying to teach them GCSE level on philosophical issues! I created specialised vocabulary sheets for them to ensure that they understood the words that I kept using throughout the class. Although to begin with it was challenging because it took so much time to create one lesson for one class; I got into the swing of it and much progress was made for both myself and the students!
Any tips for future teacher trainees?
Take the teacher training course day by day. In teaching, each day will be so different; one day you will think you’ve nailed it and the next day you may feel like you’re back at square one. Ride the teaching wave; enjoy the journey and know that each ‘mistake’ is an opportunity for reflection and progression.
Did the training put you in good stead for applying for teaching positions and going to interviews?
Absolutely. By the time the interview and lesson observation came round, I had had so much support from the two different placements I had been on, I was ready to show my teaching abilities off!
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