Careers Advice, More, Placements, Preparing for your future, Work Experience

Are you considering a career in teaching?

Your Student Life Supported

31 October 2019

Elena Hajilambi, who studies BA Music, completed work experience last year as part of the Classroom Experience Project. She went to Radyr Comprehensive’s Music department. Here she tells us about her experience.

My experience

I’ve known for years that I wanted to become a teacher in the future but wasn’t aware that in order to complete my PGCE I would need classroom experience beforehand. As I was in the first year of my BA, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get some professional classroom experience, especially because I could make it work around my degree.

I loved every minute of my placement. It was the highlight of my week every week for the time I was there. It was so rewarding working with the students and knowing that I was making a difference.

There were times where I had been working with one student during a lesson, and when they would come up and thank me at the end of the lesson or say that I had helped them, it made my day. But I also found it really rewarding working with the staff. It was lovely knowing that I was a help and not just another thing for them to think about, and they made sure that I knew my hard work was paying off. It’s amazing because it’s just reaffirmed the career choice that I made for myself years ago and proven to me that it’s within reach.

The role

I observed a lot of what the class teachers were doing and helped lead classroom tasks. My role was essentially another authority figure in the classroom to support the teacher and take some of the pressure off – it’s harder to keep eyes on everyone at once than it looks. Sometimes I was assigned to work with students who had additional learning needs and needed one-on-one attention, which would have been difficult for the class teacher to accomplish when there are 30 other students in the room.

Skills gained

I had to learn to take initiative a lot more and to be assertive in the lessons in order to keep an eye on all the students. I think most of all I developed my interpersonal skills. I was treated like a member of staff by both the students and class teachers, and that really boosted my confidence knowing that they could see me in that position. It allowed me to work on my social skills and to work on differentiating how I communicate with staff versus how I communicate with the students.

I would absolutely recommend completing a placement through CEP. It has given me another level of experience that I didn’t think I would get until my PGCE, not to mention my personal development in that time.

The CEP team were phenomenal. Amy was amazingly quick at setting up a connection with the school, and she would check in on me every so often to see how the placement was going. I knew that if anything changed or if something went wrong, I could go straight to her and she would be able to sort it. It made the experience even better knowing that I had people supporting me from all sides.

Opportunities

Elena Hajilambi, second year Music.

Your feedback and help please

Have you found this blog post useful?  Please help us by commenting in the bar below, and note any questions there too.

To help us aid more of your fellow students please re-tweet or share this post by using the share buttons.

Your Student Life, Supported.

The Student Support Centre has a range of services dedicated to helping students make the most of their time at University, including: Advice & Money, Careers & Employability, Counselling, Health & Wellbeing, Disability & Dyslexia and International Student Support.

Student Support Centres are located at 50 Park Place, Cathays Campus and Cardigan House, Heath Park Campus.

Further details of services, events, opening times and contacts search ‘support and services’ on the University Intranet.