The end of a very important year

I suppose I’d been looking forward to 2008 for a very, very long time. I know it sounds weird, looking forward to a year, but I had been. And everything happened the way I hoped it would.

Back in 2003, I was a nervous sixth-form student filling out my UCAS form. Trying to decide which courses to apply for, which universities to apply to, whether I wanted to stay in London or to go somewhere further afield. I had a bit of a dilemma because I wanted to study both Chemistry and Physics at degree-level and I didn’t like the sound of Chemical Physics as it didn’t include enough Physics. (It was more the physics of chemistry, not Physics itself.) Not only did I love both Chemistry and Physics and was determined to not give up studying either, I thought it would help me with my future teaching career to be equally qualified in two branches of science – quite a bit of forward-planning for a 17-year-old! Four years on, when I was applying for my PGCE, I didn’t count on my love of both the subjects to stay the same – trying to decide which subject to train in was pretty difficult. In the end I chose Physics because I’d cope better with the maths than I would with organic chemistry!

Having been a very organised 17-year-old (a lot did change – you should see me now!), I knew which path I wanted to follow – an four-year MSci followed by a one-year PGCE. (I didn’t want to do a BEd on the off-chance that, by the end of my degree, I’d changed my mind about going into teaching.) When I was filling out my UCAS form, we had to put the start and end dates of the courses we were applying for. September 2004 seemed like a lifetime away when I was filling out the form in September 2003 – the end date, June 2008, seemed like an eternity. And the idea that I’d finish my PGCE in 2009 seemed a million years away.

So 2008’s been and gone now. I was always nervous about doing a masters as I was never really into independent work. Out of my group of friends at university, I was the one we all though was the most unlikely to finish the course. I’ll be honest with you, it was those friends that got me through it. 2008 made me realise that anything’s possible if you’ve got enough support. I still can’t quite believe I finished my degree! I collected my degree certificate a few weeks ago and it still doesn’t seem real.

But the thing I was looking forward to the most in 2008 was starting my teacher training. And it hasn’t let me down so far. Other than all the lesson planning, evaluations, marking according to National Curriculum levels, the assignments, the sleepless nights and dreams about lesson planning, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

With all best wishes for 2009. Let’s hope it’s a good one!

I’ve changed my mind, I take it back…

So there you go. I’ve started my teaching career. It was fun to begin with, seeing new faces (well, except one – one of my best friends surprised me by telling me she was on the course too!) and making a fresh start. Recently I’ve become rather apprehensive about a career in teaching and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the new curriculum, maybe it’s fears about class management, maybe it’s a feeling of jealousy when friends who were on my course at uni tell me their PwC starting salaries of £28.5k when I’ll be lucky to get that after five years.

However, reading through my future assignments is what’s unnerved me the most. We have to write an essay  including 2,000 words about a topic and 2,500 words about how that topic is taught in schools (primary and secondary). As it’s science, the topics are divided into biology, chemistry and physics – unfortunately for me, the topics within those headings are very narrow.

I decided back in September 2007 when I applied for my PGCE that I’d apply for physics instead of chemistry – after all, nearly of my degree was in physics, so I thought I’d be alright. I was kidding myself really: out of the thirteen Physics modules I took in my four-year degree, three were in mathematics and no less than five were in atomic, molecular and quantum physics – certainly not things on even an A-level syllabus. I’d be extremely confident with the topics in the chemistry PGCE, as the remainder of my degree was in chemistry. But even that was just physical chemistry. Damn me and my bright idea of doing a degree in two sciences to make me more employable – now I just know a little bit about two sciences rather that a lot about one.

So that’s my dilema – I hate physics really. I love the nitty-gritty mathematical stuff like atomic physics or solving the Schrödinger equation, just nothing that gets taught in schools. And I love physical chemistry – again, that’s just mathematical. So what am I doing training to be a science teacher?