Learning From Your Mistakes.

I’m not a particularly confident person, I hate confrontation and I stress about the littlest things, bottling them up inside because I’m scared if I ask for help I will be judged for getting myself into that situation in the first place. And while this has always been a feature in my life it’s only really starting to become a problem now as I start to move into a more professional world and environment, because now my mistakes (particularly if I ignore them) can have real, true consequences and I need to start recognizing that.

So, I want to follow Boud’s Model of Reflection and analyse how my lack of confidence and assertion has affected my placement, by looking first at my initial experience; thinking about how I felt and acted at the time, before reflecting upon this from a new perspective and then finally thinking about the outcome; has anything positive come from this?

Experience.

My experience presents slightly differently to the others I have written about, as it is not one defining moment but instead a consistent lack of assertiveness and confidence that I want to discuss. Therefore, “for the sake of simplicity” I will refer to the experience as if it were a singular event, (Boud, p. 23), in particular I am going to discuss the catalystic moment, which was;

The negotiation of my placement terms.

I felt anxious and stressed about this, because of course I wanted the best experience possible so that I am more prepared for future jobs. And also more aware of what to do, because I have always thought I would go into teaching and I really wanted to make sure it was right for me before delving in and doing my PGCE. But at the same time I was aware that the school held no real responsibility to me so I was afraid to ask for too much, and so when my supervising teacher said;

My response was;

“We may not be able to give you the full 100 hours you are asking for, due to various reasons.”

I tried to pretend everything would be fine but I also knew I needed the full 100 hours to pass the module so I was riddled with stress and anxiety. This all then came to a head when in January as a class we were asked how many hours we had completed and everyone else was almost done or at least over half way and I was at 30.

I was terrified.

Reflection

I’ve done a little research on this since, particularly looking at how I can assert myself and found that Herbert and Rothwell define assertiveness as;

 “having a clear idea of who you are and what you want but at the same time appreciating that to achieve your goals you have to accept the rights of other people and accept responsibility for your own actions.” (pg190).

I didn’t have a clear idea of who I was or what I wanted in this situation, but after realizing how far behind I had fallen I learnt that by accepting me as a placement student the secondary school owed me the hours that I needed. But, I also realized that it was up to me to tell them that, and I should have accepted that responsibility and explained to them further how the module works and what I needed. So in that initial conversation with my supervising teacher I should have said something along the lines of;

“I completely understand, however I need these hours for my module, so is there any way we could figure a way around this?”

And I should’ve given her some options that could accommodate me, such as; I could shadow a class, give extra support to students etc.

And I did say something similar to this is January after my eyes were opened up to my mistakes and she responded wholly positively and arranged for me to come in for one full day a week to observe and provide extra support, which at this point in time has upped my hours to 88!

Outcome.

This proves to me that I should have been aware from the start what was negotiable and what was not, I should have also made my agenda very clear, while also being aware that they may not be able to offer that and that’s okay, they have a responsibility to themselves too. But I am understanding that it was okay to feel that way, my feelings were valid and I shouldn’t completely discount them by saying that I made a mistake and I just have to take responsibility, because I can eventually did do both.

I think I’m also starting to realise that maybe I do need more time before I do a PGCE, because I don’t think I’ve matured enough to feel like an authority figure over the students and that should come with time.

This experience, beyond personal growth and realization has had some real world benefits as I recently applied for a job at the BBC and throughout the application process I tried to make it clear I was not going to be available until May, having discussed this with the recruitment team myself and it being clearly stated on my CV. However, when they offered me the job, they said my start date was in March…

This time last year I don’t know what I would’ve done, probably ignored it and buried my head in the sand, but I quickly emailed them and told them that I cannot do that and gave them a few options. After some hemming and hawing, they offered to let me start part time for now and I can become full time in July during the next recruitment process (all things going well of course).

So I guess I have learnt from my mistakes.

Bibliography

Herbert, I, and Andrew Rothwell. Managing Your Placement. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print.

Boud, David et al. Reflection. Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2015. Web.

Bogg, Daisy, and Maggie Challis. Evidencing CPD : A Guide To Building Your Social Work Portfolio. Critical Publishing, 2013. Web.