Tracey Maloney
Director of Initial Teacher Training
Every January and February, I like to deliberately take time to remind myself of the changes that the eQ programmes and partnerships are about to undertake. To date, there are 104 Second School Placement swaps, 39 of these are new schools which we have partnered with solely for Second School Placements.
I try to do this in the most visceral of ways to prevent myself from becoming blasé about the trainees’ experiences on a second placement.
Often, it goes something like this… I have a university friend called Michelle, an excellent English teacher, teaching at a large school in Surrey. She’s been there for about eight years, revered amongst pupils and particularly for developing cracking schemes of work and bringing texts alive. Her pupils achieve extraordinary results, and she is fully embedded in the subject community. If, on January 8th, I received a phone call to say that we were swapping lives, there is no doubt that I would be daunted. I know ‘what’ she does, I know the job, I know about English, but I don’t know ‘how’ she does any of that in that setting. I don’t know the pupils’ names, I’m not sure if she has her own classroom (I really hope she does, that will make it easier), I can’t remember if she has done the Shakespeare text or not. Maybe she has a form group, pretty sure she has a Sixth Form one – I’m going to have to go back over the UCAS process to prepare myself. Also, I think she runs drama club…
See, works every time, heart rate now nicely raised and I’m ready for the second placement period of the programme. My preparation is the final piece to a yearlong design process, honed fully by the eQ curriculum team.
A teacher training course is a year of change and transformation, a good curriculum should always transform, it is also punctuated by contrasts – all the better to reflect upon.
We begin the eQ course by focusing on quality first teaching principles to ensure that some of the change around being in front of a class, being accountable and assuming a different role, are minimised. Ensuring that the theoretical underpinning of routines, behaviour and learning environment are introduced and consolidated through approximations.
It is incumbent upon us as educators to sequence the curriculum to ease a path through the changed state that trainees find themselves in and to ensure that pupil outcomes are the best that they can be throughout this process.
In the eQ partnership structure, we share a joint determination to navigate the changes for novices to the profession and teach them how to make adaptive alterations to their emerging practice.
Those of you who are familiar with the work of Michael Fullan will recognise some of his phrasing there as he advocates for ‘culture-based accountability’. The culture of our partnership means that we are all, both invested in, and accountable for, trainee progression and ultimately, their successful entry to the profession.
Like me and my life swap scenario, trainee teachers do approach their second placement with a level of trepidation, often musing that wouldn’t it be good to perhaps go for a day, read about a different school via websites, ask a friend… anything but to experience a rupture in their knowing by experiencing change.
And there we have it, don’t we? ‘It is not by looking at things but by dwelling in them that we understand their joint meaning’, Michael Polanji The Tacit Dimension.
That is where we have been for nearly six weeks, we have all been in another place, changing and adapting, growing, and learning. Second school placements are a vital part of our programme and are also fraught with moving parts and sheer commitment from so many ITT Leads and mentors to make them work, but goodness, does it bring changes in practice.
For that, we thank you, for your unswerving commitment:
‘Empathy for context is an essential requirement for making change with the people who live the context every day. When it comes to given situations, there are no shortcuts to nuance’.
Michael Fullan Nuance