PGCE Historian James Clarke reflects on a challenging – but rewarding placement 1 – and looks back on a unique and varied placement so far
After spending the previous two weeks ill with Covid-19, it was a welcome sight to be back at Bury Church of England High School to pick up where the placement had left off. Despite several year groups being sent home before half-term, attendance on the first day back was good. There is a vibrant atmosphere to the school, which matched my enthusiasm for returning to teach. I hadn’t conducted any teaching in the first week (save for an emergency intervention covering a class where an administrative error meant a teacher had not turned up), so I was pleased to hear from my professional mentor that we would be able to teach within the first week back. My fellow history trainee, Jamie, joined me in the meeting with our mentor, where we were assured that planning is the key to having a successful lesson. Indeed, she promised that we would spend time the following day planning a lesson on the Norman Conquest for year 7s together – a treat, as both Jamie and I are medievalists. Lesson observations at the beginning of week three offered us inspiration for this planning, and we were pleased to learn that the school had recently incorporated a new section of work on black Tudors. The PGCE Secondary History course at the University of Manchester stresses the importance of decolonising the curriculum and exploring the experiences of minority peoples during the 16th century is a valuable way of beginning this decolonisation. By the end of the week, I had been given notice of which lessons I was going to teach in week four and was instructed to plan a lesson for Monday on the growth of Nazi support in Weimar Germany. After producing a plan to show to my mentor, she suggested that I help her co-teach half of a lesson on the abolition of the British slave trade later in the day. Eager to get involved after weeks of preparation, I agreed to help. The lesson was great fun and a really positive start to my teaching career – I even received a seal of approval from one of the pupils who came up to me after the class had finished and told me “you did a really good job in your first lesson, sir,” which was very nice to hear. Week four was my first week of teaching full lessons. I taught my first to a reduced year 11 class due to isolating students and received positive feedback from the observing teacher, who noted that I had excellent subject knowledge and a positive way of addressing disruptive behaviour. As the week went on, I also taught a challenging year 8 class followed immediately after by a high-ability year 7 class. The juxtaposition between the two classes made for a valuable experience as a trainee teacher, and it was interesting to see how my style adapted from one hour to the next. I led a remembrance lesson based around the theme of reconciliation with the year 7 class, who demonstrated a really high level of maturity in their responses as well as offering a string of lovely and, at times, quite moving stories about their relatives who had fought in wars. On Friday, we took part in a university webinar led by members of the Guardian Foundation. They had lots to tell us about their aim to empower young children and support journalists working in areas where it would be difficult to work. As part of their goal to support teachers in empowering young children, they introduced us to a workshop that put children in the position of journalists. Included in the webinar were lots of ideas about how we, as teachers, could introduce the idea of ‘fake news’ to pupils and how to determine the legitimacy and accuracy of a news source. Finally, we were joined by Dr. Janette Martin who spoke to us about the exhibition on the Manchester Guardian, which she hoped to take us on, Covid-permitting. She recommended to us the ‘made in Manchester’ section of the website Medium, which contains special collections of resources that are ideal for teaching local students. While my first four weeks on placement have been a tumultuous time in the midst of a global pandemic, they have also been incredibly rewarding. The PGCE Secondary History course at the University of Manchester does an excellent job of preparing trainee teachers for even the most extreme of circumstances – and making it into a positive experience no matter what has been thrown at us. Introducing us to organisations such as the Guardian Foundation has allowed us to foster vital connections that offer us the opportunity to enrich our future teaching, an opportunity that cannot be found on many other PGCE courses.
University of Manchester History PGCE 