BEd1 Programme Learning Portfolio

Semester two of first year went even quicker than I could have imagined. I had great intentions of being on top of everything, if not ahead of where I needed to be. However, my first reflection more or less set the tone for the rest of my semester to come. I have had to learn that things don’t always go to plan, life happens and there’s just not much you can do about it sometimes. I do however think that I have learned a lot from this year and will utilise my experience of this year going forward into second year.   I was extremely nervous starting semester two with the thought of school placement and the Gaeltacht ahead of me. I was nervous that I wouldn’t enjoy placement and that my class would be difficult to handle. As for the Gaeltacht, I desperately want to improve my Irish but it is a source of severe anxiety for me as a mature student and one of the reasons I didn’t apply for teaching back when I was in school. For these reasons, I wanted to get ahead of my work so that I co

Teaching & Learning in the Primary School  This reflection is an extension of my last. This time, however, the focus is on the role the teacher when forming relationships with parents. This is an important relationship but sometimes challenging. I have seen from working with my cooperating teacher on SP and from friends who are teachers how reliant parents can become on you as a figure in their child’s life and often divulge very private and sensitive information with you. The gravity of this role really resonated with me and the responsibility of knowing how best to appropriately deal with situations and seek external advice when needed.

Teaching & Learning in the Primary School In our reflective tutorial today we discussed the role of the teacher in the classroom. What struck me was the diversity of the role and the closeness in nature of the relationship between that of the student and teacher. Roles such as educator, authoritative figure etc. were   some of the more obvious roles mentioned, however, it surprised how quickly the more ‘personal’ teacher roles were highlighted; and more significantly the weight that these roles carried or were regarded by us e.g. reliable, trustworthy, a friend, and sometimes in the case of junior classes a ‘mother’ role is adapted by the teacher.