How do you envisage the Maths Scholarship supporting you through your initial teacher training?

Jill TombsWith it being so early on still in the course, it is hard to know for sure which parts of the Scholarships programme will be of most help to me, but as there is such wide variety I am certain it WILL BE OF HELP!

I think the most obvious one to start with is the access to top quality professional resources to use and provide ideas for classroom lessons and interactive sessions. I envisage lesson planning to be time consuming, and any help I can find with resources and interactive games relating to maths is going to be invaluable, especially top-quality ones!

Following on from this I am looking forward to the networking opportunities and learning from other scholars and professionals’ experiences. The scholarship provides a unique and broad network, where I hope to meet other career changers like myself and hear about their classroom experiences. Whether that be good ones or disastrous ones and what they have learnt so far. Meeting and talking to other people in a similar position to myself, coming to teaching later in life, I hope will give me a confidence boost knowing there are lots of other people doing the same thing from all different backgrounds and previous life experiences and stories. Additionally, to this I am looking forward to being part of a community where everyone loves Maths! Out in the big wide world, this isn’t very common and so to meet like-minded people and discuss various topics relating to maths should be great fun.

The free memberships to professional bodies is also a benefit which I envisage leveraging, whether that be through access to journals and articles which will be particularly useful for the university essay parts of my course, or for Continuing Professional Development training through webinars and conferences. Staying abreast of new developments in maths, education and teaching is a further benefit I hope to be exposed to through the networking and CPD opportunities the Scholarship programme has to offer.

I hope with all this extra support available to me, I make the most of it and become the best teacher I am able to be. And lastly, I obviously hope that it will look good on my CV and help me secure my first teaching job after completing this PGCE ITT year!

By Jill Tombs