Today was my second day of placement at Divine Mercy and was also the last day of the required hours for the Third term. It was a bittersweet day since I was getting used to the environment as well as the teachers. Today we got the opportunity to accompany the year five class to their trip to an arts college. This was related to the work that they had been working on throughout the week. Divine Mercy has two of each class so both the year five classes were going on a short day trip. Preparing a trip for sixty children is quite challenging and everything has to be done in an orderly fashion.
The coaches ended up breaking down so the trip ended up being canceled which was a shame. from a professional viewpoint, this must have been quite a challenge to reassure sixty children and come up with an alternative plan. Many things can go wrong so be a successful teacher requires you to think on your feet. To make matters worse the 
teacher’s powerpoint ended up shutting down and would not load. It was very interesting to see the teacher come up with a solution of finishing off posters which the children had been working on.
I got the chance to sit and talk to a group of children about their future goals and what highschools they were looking to go to. The conversation was interesting and differences of opinion were shared in a civil debate about religion. Divine Mercy is a Roman Catholic school where many of the children are from different walks of life as well as faith. It was intriguing to see their views on different matters; for example how the world was created and why were we created, whilst still being good friends. The conversations were very mature and I was taking back by the respect the students had for each other.
The second part of the day was spent with year two whilst they learned to sew and make a monster puppet. The resources were laid in the middle of the table and the children had to learnt to share the resources. Moreover, since this was the children’s first time sewing they had to learn to wait patiently for the teacher since they all needed help. so the teachers were largely overnumbered.
Sidenote- Had a very fun experience at Divine Mercy filled with some ups and downs but this is what teaching is all about so it has taught me a lot. I can’t wait for the PGCE process to become a qualified teacher. we also got a glimpse of the teachers training day since the teaching standards are constantly changing with a new curriculum.
*My blogs will state the different days that I have gone through, during the third term programme*
zahraseducationaljourney 