u/Aggravating-Fan-1597

Hi all!

I am a pre-service teacher in NSW in their final year of studies that is wanting to do some casual teaching my final year. I recently got my conditional accreditation which allows me to teach in any school that is not a public school.

I have my application open and there’s a few things i’m confused about. For the NCCHC application they want you to upload 3 different types of certification alongside the document but i’m not sure how to do that since there’s no spot in the application to add that in.

I also can see in the approval to teach application that there is a seperate spot for ID documents. Do I post them there?

I don’t want to mess this up so any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Good afternoon everybody! This is quite a long story but I would love some advice :)

I am a pre-service teacher currently on placement for a year 3/4 class. I absolutely love the class so far, it is my third placement and my mentor teacher is so lovely and fair which makes me feel safe enough to make mistakes.

My last placement was not the most enjoyable experience I have ever had. I was on a placement with a mentor teacher that was tough, and borderline rude to not only me but to other PSTs and even teacher as the school (casual and full time). She often told me to not spend my time doing anything else, and to dedicate my entire weekend to planning out my lessons for the week. She would look at them the morning of before my lessons, would tell me that it sounded great and then during my lessons would critique me out loud in front of the students.

If I didn’t have a video loaded up and ready she would make a comment about it in front of everybody, or there would be times where I needed to add in a blank powerpoint slide and I would add one in during the lesson and she would tell me that my organisational skills need a lot of work.

I made a lot of connections with the kids, I was even able to bring a struggling student from 40% to 90% in mathematics, and so on my final day I got a lot of cards from the kids with a lot of lovely messages and I did get emotional and cry because it’s hard to make these connections and then leave. My teacher was going over my final report and she said that I was insecure in myself and that I cried when the kids did nice things for me because I have no faith in myself, and the only reason why she passed me was because she didn’t want me to fall back.

I am someone who is very passionate about teaching as well as forming connections with students. I want to provide an environment for all students where they can do what is expected of them and also have fun at the same time because that’s what learning should be like.

Hearing this really destroyed my confidence, and the words she said to me really have stuck with me. I’m on my third placement now, I taught my first lesson on Friday and I showed a video to the kids, I forgot how to find the slides and I instantly panicked because I forgot to ask how to get back to the slides once the video has ended and I was freaking out internally, I even apologised for not asking earlier. After my lesson ended, I burst into tears because I was so nervous and anxious I didn’t know how to feel. When I was teaching I was forgetting definitions of words and I was struggling to explain some words to the kids.

My question is, how can I recover from my placement experience last year and become more confident? Does anybody have tips for explaining things better to students? Thank you :)