Desk, I believe you've met head before right? Well, meet it again...

[fireheart]

...and please buy it a drink.


So I have another teaching placement this year. Six weeks in a school. However, there are two caveats:

1) It HAS to be an early years placement (meaning K-2).
2) Because I'm doing Special Education, it also needs to be a Special Ed. placement. (this does not restrict me when I go for teacher registration however)

I get allocated a place a little bit late and all seems well right?

Well, I rock up to the school on the day I'd been told and everything fell flat.

The mentor teacher was wonderful. but it was the wrong class. I'd been allocated a primary special needs placement. And the JP teacher didn't want me. To her credit, the reason why she didn't want me was based on the fact that the class is brand new to the school and she'll be brand new to the students.

So now I go on the merry-go-round of being REALLOCATED. Yay! -.-

I pretty much sent the uni a huge list of schools that I could consider as well as two that had been recommended by the mentor teacher.

So I'll be doing one of the following:

-Special Class. We narrowed it down to around 7 schools that had JP special ed classes (JP-Junior Primary, K-2) and of those, 2 of them had teachers I could consider.

-School for the Blind.

-School for kids who are deafblind or have multiple disabilities.

I should know soon.


But here's the real kicker: the uni knew full well that I needed a JP placement. What they told my first school was that I needed a PRIMARY placement. *headdesk*

[Kheldarson]

Oooh...I know this dance!

When I did my student teaching, I was the last student placed. Why? Because the local county is so inundated with student teachers (two teaching colleges in the area) that a lot of teachers don't bother anymore (from bad experience) or already had a student assigned. And my college was behind the 8-ball on getting things started.

So guess who started a week later on her assignment and had to have special dispensation to stay at one school post?

Sorry this is happening, fireheart. Ain't school bureaucracy great?

[fireheart]

So guess who started a week later on her assignment and had to have special dispensation to stay at one school post?

Sorry this is happening, fireheart. Ain't school bureaucracy great?

Ah, I had a similar scenario with my first placement. I had to stay a week later because the school break was 3 weeks instead of 2.

Of course, that was the one I failed. I had to get special dispensation to do the placement I just finished.

As a result of me finishing that placement late, I wound up being placed late

From what I'm aware though, the final year students get placed first, then the third year students, then the second year students. (second year students don't do any formalised teaching, they spend time in the classroom observing, helping and shadowing. third year students take up to half a day of lessons, final year students take the whole shebang from start to finish )

[Kheldarson]

(second year students don't do any formalised teaching, they spend time in the classroom observing, helping and shadowing. third year students take up to half a day of lessons, final year students take the whole shebang from start to finish )

Yeah...that's about right. My first year* I went in and had 25 hours of observation. I helped out with handing things out and stuff too, but I was mostly there to watch. Second year, about the same thing, only a couple of classes wanted you to teach a lesson. Third year, it was 30 hours by then and a portion of the time had to be spent teaching. Then final year, teaching the whole thing baby!

It was great

*Year here is kind of subjective, of course. There were certain classes that were low level and then, of course, higher level courses, so you ended up with strange mix and match requirements sometimes in a semester.

[fireheart]

*does the dorky pony white boy dance that RW does*

So I finally got placed.