Cerberus Posted July 20, 2017 Share Posted July 20, 2017 I wish they had people coming up with stuff like dyscalculia in my day. I would have loved a calculator in my exam. I wouldn't have had to study. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raidernation Posted July 20, 2017 Share Posted July 20, 2017 6 hours ago, pandarilla said: Pedagogy is important - but if you're looking for a magic bullet in teaching I'd say it's relationships. If you have the social skills to connect with young people and earn their trust and respect then the job's a bogey. Everything else is quite easy to get right, with a little bit of effort. You can have the best teaching ideas in the world and it won't mean a thing if the class don't like you. Same applies to ability/qualification in a subject, or use of technology or anything like that. This, most definitely. As for the higher maths for primary teachers issue, I agree they don't heed a higher, but they most definitely do need an ability to teach arithmetic CONFIDENTLY, as well as basic algebra and geometry COMPETENCY. I met with a lot of primary teachers, and observed maths lessoned, as a PT visiting the ASG and, by f**k, what I saw was frequent poor methodology taught poorly by poorly taught teachers (just read that back and it does make sense). Combine stories of teachers giving out calculators to P1 and P2 ("so they can keep up" "so they don't feel dumb" "makes it easier"!!) and it's a bit of a frightening prospect for future generations. Anyway I LOVED teaching in Scotland, there was never a single day I thought I'd made a bad choice, teaching in the US, I HATED! To the OP, GO FOR IT, you'll never know if you don't try. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alsy Posted July 20, 2017 Share Posted July 20, 2017 6 hours ago, Tartantony said: My first placement was St Andrews in Carntyne where the head teacher was some Dale Winton perma tan knobhead who seemed to want to discipline his staff like they were his pupils. Second and third placements were at a school in Clydebank where my head of maths was a complete witch of a woman. I wonder if this is the same one mentioned in one of your posts? Bruce Almighty ;). He's retired now, I think, but he was notorious throughout Glasgow. I've never met the guy, but for the people I know who have, he's a bit of a Marmite figure. Some say he was an inspirational character, others say that he was a self-serving blowhard. It was me who mentioned the batshit PT in West Dunbartonshire, but she was a head of English, not Maths, and the school wasn't in Clydebank. The same mate that I was on my first placement with was in Dumbarton for his second, and had to report a member of the department for taking photos of him while he was teaching, so perhaps W Dunbartonshire just has a high preponderance of complete mentalists... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
parsforlife Posted July 20, 2017 Share Posted July 20, 2017 There are pupils these days who are allowed a calculator in the non-calculator paper on the grounds that they are either dyscalculic or just not very good at times tables. My views on this are pretty strong. Do we even need a non-calculator exam ? It's a freely available tool, more important to know how to use it than how to live without it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyrshireTon Posted July 20, 2017 Share Posted July 20, 2017 1 hour ago, parsforlife said: Do we even need a non-calculator exam ? It's a freely available tool, more important to know how to use it than how to live without it. The paper tests both non caculator skills and topics that don't need one anyway. In real life most folk will go to the calculator on their phones. It's one thing using it for quickness but quite another to know what the calculation means. Marking exams it can be quite frightening seeing the simple things that kids can't do. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carl Cort's Hamstring Posted July 20, 2017 Share Posted July 20, 2017 I've had wildly different experiences in my first two years as a primary teacher. I really enjoyed my first year. It was hard work (I do take work home, but that's mainly because I'm a hugely inefficient procrastinator I could get virtually everything done at school if I really needed to), but I had a great time, and the boys in the class responded well to having a male teacher for the first time. We've got a majority West African intake, so it also helped that I speak a bit of Igbo and Yoruba and can relate to the kids in a way some of the other staff can't. This year has been pretty hellish though. I've had 3 children with pretty severe emotional/behavioural difficulties, who have made the class almost unteachable at times. Our leadership team refuse to follow their own behaviour protocols because any internal or external exclusions "make the school look bad." This meant that when one of the children called the TA a "stupid bitch," and then tried to punch me, the next day he was back in my class with a note from the head saying 'Is he behaving better today?' I teach in the most deprived part of London (and one of the poorest local authorities in the whole of Britain), and it's been a a pretty horrific eye-opener seeing what kids from these kinds of backgrounds live with. I've had several kids who were essentially malnourished, a boy who was sleeping in a car because Mum had been evicted from their home and an 8 year old from Poland who witnessed her Dad get acid poured over him in a racist attack. I love working with the kids, but I think I need to get out of this environment within the next year or so before I go insane. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saigon Raider Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 (edited) Haven't read the whole thread - thought I would add my experience. I trained and taught in England for 2 years and then moved to an international school in Vietnam - completely opened my eyes to a world that I didn't even know existed back then. The difference in terms of classroom behaviour and the way that teachers are respected (and paid!) is unbelievable. I stayed in Saigon for 4 years and then moved to a top school in Jakarta - been there for four years now. I teach International Baccalaureate Economics and Business Management. Kids are amazing and the benefits that my whole family get are very good. The main thing, for me, is that the bureaucracy, etc is so reduced, no lesson plans being checked, no OFSTED, etc. Met my Australian wife in Vietnam and we have had 2 kids over here in the last 5 years. The kids go to the school for free, we have private health insurance, flights home every year, 9 weeks holidays in summer, 3 at Christmas. There are risks to teaching abroad - no pension being one and also unexpected happenings (I left my last school in Saigon as it was taken over by Cognita and they made some huge changes - 70% of the high school faculty left that year). If you are interested in moving away to teach then I would absolutely recommend it. Being away from family, etc is one of the downsides but the positives far outweigh the negatives - we will never go back to Scotland or Australia to teach and will keep moving around every few years. Edited July 21, 2017 by Saigon Raider 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pandarilla Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 I believe you may have visited Dumbarton Academy between 1998 and 2004... if so you may well have taught me. I was done good at England, me won English price in forth yeer. Also, the PT and just about every one of the teachers were all mental. I was there on a placement in 2005. The old modern studies teacher was certainly barking mad. The old history guy was nice but fairly ineffective (worn down over many years). He pulled me up for poor grammar in the classroom (for using the term 'yous' when I spoke). I thought about explaining to him the concept of connecting with pupils but sensibly bit my tongue. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paco Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 They both have said getting a job anywhere near the central belt is impossible. One has been offered a permanent job in Dingwall and the other Methil! Make of that what you will. One of them was offered a job in the central belt, then? You could live in Edinburgh Castle and commute to Methil no trouble. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miguel Sanchez Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 From P1-7 and until halfway through 4th year I was brilliant at maths. Then I went on holiday and missed being taught surds and indices, it was game over after that. Throughout 3rd and 4th year I regularly told my teacher that I hated the subject but I still had to do higher because I was in the top class (which she, by that time head of the department, had taken through years 1-5 and then 6th for the weirdos who did advanced higher) and there wasn't any other option. Complete waste of time, and by then it wasn't a case of me convincing myself that I wasn't any good at it. It was too hard for someone who legitimately didn't have any interest in it. I'm sure I've mentioned on here before that in 5th year when the credit standard grade exam happened our teacher brought the exam paper up for us to have a go at. I could answer one question that was about working out interest, just adding a percentage of an amount on however many times. The rest was gibberish. With this delightful tale of no1curr in mind, with a C (on appeal) in higher maths if I were a teacher I could manage primary level maths, although this would probably be based in my communicative ability through being much better and more interested in English. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pandarilla Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 Was that Mr Galletly? I loved that guy. History guy with ginger hair? He was so knowledgeable but got such a hard time. I really enjoyed Modern Studies at school, the one class where your own opinion mattered and all the neds ruined it by acting like weans. Aye that was him. Mad as a bag of spanners. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrewDon Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 1 hour ago, pandarilla said: He pulled me up for poor grammar in the classroom (for using the term 'yous' when I spoke). I thought about explaining to him the concept of connecting with pupils but sensibly bit my tongue. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harry94 Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 On 19/07/2017 at 23:55, AyrshireTon said: There are pupils these days who are allowed a calculator in the non-calculator paper on the grounds that they are either dyscalculic or just not very good at times tables. My views on this are pretty strong. Even that pales compared to the role of a "prompter" - where you tap the desk of the candidate to remind them that they need to answer the questions in their exam. At a certain level though, I don't really see the point in it. Advanced Higher was just one big paper over three hours which made sense but Higher had the two exams in quite a demanding time frame which I remember being quite intense at the time. The only reason I think that they had the two papers at higher was the trigonometric functions. If that is the case and there is nothing else I'm forgetting, I don't really see why they couldn't have had the current 'non-calculator' question start off by asking for a quick sketch of a graph (showing where you've taken your points) as having a calculator won't really do you much good there and I don't think it really obscures what is being taught. I get it's a tougher argument lower down but if you're being asked to do long division for example, it is about the process and although a calculator may be helpful for validation, it isn't going to take away from the main purpose. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miguel Sanchez Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 I was never taught long division. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lambie's Pigeon Feed Posted July 21, 2017 Author Share Posted July 21, 2017 A lot of food for thought in this thread. Did any of you tick the 'willing to work anywhere' box for your probationary year? If a couple both ticked it would they send us both to the same remote area? I suppose the alternative would be move back to Glasgow and get something within travel distance but that extra money would be good and I do like the idea of being in an idyllic part of the country for a while. Also working on the assumption permenant jobs in the central belt, particularly Glasgow and Edinburgh, are much harder to get? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pandarilla Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 I highly doubt it. (About sending you both to the same region. You could always ask but I think they'd tell you to do one). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KnightswoodBear Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 5 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said: I recently saw someone writing down the area of a circle as πd3. I know! Right? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KnightswoodBear Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 2 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said: This was someone who had probably sat Higher Maths about 6 months prior and was undertaking a technical degree from a reputable University. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthernJambo Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 This was someone who had probably sat Higher Maths about 6 months prior and was undertaking a technical degree from a reputable University. Makes this person most likely to be 18/19. Pics or GTF. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthernJambo Posted July 21, 2017 Share Posted July 21, 2017 See KBs pic above. If you are into that kind of thing then each to their own. She's a dog!!! Hahahahahahaha lololololol fuckin belter 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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