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Maisie Greenwood - My experience of placement one.

I was sitting on my lunchbreak at work when I first got the phone call to invite me for an interview at CTTC. At this point I was living in Norwich, with the intention of moving back home (Colchester area) to pursue my teaching career, so I quickly had to arrange travel to get myself back to Colchester ready for the interview. I was fairly late to the application process as I had some deliberation over which area of the country I would complete my training in, but decided that CTTC would provide me with the most support. The ladies at CTTC were wonderful and were really understanding and accommodating of my situation, and within 2 days of receiving the phone call I was on the road ready to interview for the start of my teaching journey – eek!

            Arriving for the interview naturally I felt quite nervous. However, as soon as I got there I was immediately put at ease – this ended up a common theme throughout my first placement with CTTC. I underwent the normal interview process which was an interview, a short lesson, and some time to reflect on the lesson. I actually really enjoyed the interview process and it really reaffirmed for me that teaching was what I wanted to be doing. It is a great chance to ‘test’ if the job/course suits you, and to ask any questions you may have about the course and teaching in general. Before I knew it, I accepted the course with CTTC and was busy shopping for new stationary and clothes (one of the best parts of being a teacher!).

            Prior to starting our first placements, all the trainees underwent an induction period that helped prepare us for our placements and to ensure we understood the evaluation process of the course. This really helped to ease me into the teaching experience and made me feel less apprehensive about going into schools, particularly coming from someone who had minimal previous teaching experience. Going into my placement school I had a wealth of support on top of this. We are assigned a professional tutor and mentor within the school who help you to integrate into the school, answer any questions along the way and monitor and support your progress throughout the placement. However, in my experience, the entire department, and even the wider school, have been endlessly supportive in my training and were really eager to help me succeed. In fact, the colleagues I have met and the relationships I have built with them has been some of the highlights of my first placement with CTTC. The rapport I have been able to build with my students in such a short period of time is also something special, I think any teacher will agree that is the best part of the job.

All in all, I thoroughly recommend anyone thinking about training to teach with CTTC to just go for it!

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