My day as a trainee teacher – Umar Hussain

Umar Hussain - Maths TeacherI believe that my day as a trainee teacher is rather compact, especially Fridays. On Friday I am required to attend university and learn how to teach mathematics. This for me is one of the more exciting days as I can share my experiences in school with my peers. But we are also able to attend masterclasses on how to teach certain topics that are also enjoyable.

The majority of my days start the same. Unlike university I am required to wake up rather early! However, this would be the case for the majority of post-university life. From being ready to go, I spend a lot of time contemplating different delivery techniques I could use to any class that I may be teaching that day.

One of the most pleasant things about my day is, I am treated like a proper teacher, given a timetable in the same manner as a normal teacher, however instead of twenty hours of teaching, I will complete a combination of, teaching, observing and TA’ing. Additionally, we also get free periods, where we can either lesson plan or engage in the social aspect of the teacher life. Most departments and extremely helpful, friendly and very encouraging to trainees. Lots of teachers are eager to share their experiences and will offer a wide variety of tasks you could do in addition to the course, so that your experience is richer overall.

One of the most dominant parts of my day is lesson planning. I most likely spend approximately three to four hours a day doing so, however because I enjoy the task as much as I do, the time flies by. I am a teacher who believes in learning through discovery and therefore my lessons do take slightly longer to plan. I believe it is worth it as on many occasions my students will have that “light bulb” moment and will understand the mechanics of mathematics on a much deeper level.

At the moment, I am loving my time as a trainee teacher and I am learning so much from my mentor, I love teaching and the IMA have also been so helpful. I would strongly recommend to anyone thinking of teaching that they should try this course and also apply through the IMA to do so. Some of the resources and training days provided by the IMA are amazing!

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