PGCE mentor nightmare - averted!
I’m currently studying my PGCE part time while working full time in an FE college; I feel so lucky to have been able to take this paid route into teaching after so many financial barriers before!
I’ve just started year 2, and when I reached out to my mentor two weeks ago to try book in our first observation, he said he couldn’t take it on this year because of his personal circumstances.
Okay. Fine. People gotta be having their lives.
But DUDE. Did you have to wait until I’d literally started the course back up again to tell me?? No warning that I’d need to find a new mentor??
THANKFULLY my luck has not run out. I vented about this whole shit show to my work friend (turned real life friend), who also teaches the same subject as I do. She immediately offered to fill the role, despite also mentoring another staff member this year.
Honesty, at this point in my training, the mentor role is more of a formality - I know what I am doing, have been teaching for years without a formal qualification, and am given almost complete autonomy over my teaching and resources because it is clear I don’t need babysitting with it. I only really need the mentor as a name on a form, and for a single lesson observation to go into my portfolio for this year.
But I am SO GRATEFUL that this potential headache has been avoided, and that my mentor for this year is going to be someone whose opinion I genuinely value, who is an excellent teacher, and who has already been giving me so much support and confidence.