Developing Confidence in the Field

Developing Confidence in the Field

22nd October, 2015 

Aaron looks into how involving yourself in work and experiences with young students can help you understand how they think, play, live and learn

Picture this, it’s the first day of a placement, you’ve had a chat to a teacher or two prior to your first experience in the class room, but the bell has just gone and you can see 25-30 children running up to the door. Butterflies start to build in great numbers in your stomach, and a little frog appears to be slowly making his way up your throat, and as soon as those children get to the door, you need to be switched on and in charge. “What is happening to me?!?!” you think to yourself in your currently jumbled mind, “PULL IT TOGETHER, THEY’RE STANDING RIGHT INFRONT OF ME!” is the next jump, and then you calmly say out loud, “Good Morning everyone, come inside, put your bags away and come sit on the mat.”

I have found in my experiences studying a Bachelor of Education that a large number of Pre Service Teachers are very nervous heading into their placements, and the root of this nervousness is often a lack of experience working with, or being in the presence of large groups of children. Often people begin studying this degree for relatively trivial reasons like “I LOVE KIDS” or “I’ve got three younger siblings, so I’ll be a great teacher.” Which may be a useful tool at some stage in your teaching career, but initially at least on your first experiences coming face to face with a group of children; I don’t feel like these things will really calm the ever growing butterfly population in your lower torso region.

What has been really fortunate for me, and to be fair, quite a large number of other PSTs, has been the ability to develop some experience working with larger groups of kids in various forms of child care, and Outside School Hours activity groups. Now this might sound like a no brainer, of course working with children will help build your confidence – but I think as a whole it really is something that a lot of people overlook, or maybe even turn their noses up at, when starting off in their education journey. Having worked in Child Care, Outside School Hours Care and Foster Care, prior to and throughout the time I have been studying, I feel this is something that has really helped me let go of the worries I’ve had about my ability to stand up in front of a class and it also has given me a wealth of activities and ideas that translate really well to the classroom environment.

An assurance needs to be made really quickly, that I am not writing this as some sort of weird recruitment letter to the masses who may be reading it, but merely sharing a bit of advice, that I think could be helpful to people who struggle with these butterflies and frogs, as I know we all do. Working with children whether in a child care centre, babysitting, tutoring, youth group mentoring or even being a scouts or girl guides leader, can be a really great experience, and work quite well with your timetables at university, as well as helping develop some skills that will really pay off when it comes to functioning confidently in the classroom. There is nothing more confronting than being hit with a question you don’t know the answer to when standing in front of a class, or notice the outdoor PE activity is taking a turn for the rowdy, and you need a quick new activity to round out the session, and this is where this experience really shows its worth.

All I’m really trying to get across in this maiden post (for myself) on the blog is that if working in this field alongside my time studying this degree, it’s that having this experience and comfort level around groups of children has really helped how I feel and inherently operate when standing in front of a classroom on placement. I think as with anyone experiencing something for the first time, we all need to expect some butterflies and throat climbing frogs. However, if we can do something to limit these, and be more in control of our feelings and our emotions when faced with a group of keen (or not so keen) learners, we will function better when standing at the front of the room, and will far more comfortably and confidently work through our lessons to deliver the best teaching that we can.

     - Aaron