My PgCE pre-course and just how intense this next year may well be

I have had quite a busy week between last Sunday and this one just gone, basically it was travel to Lancaster, attend pre-course, graduate, attend pre-course, attend pre-course, travel home, go to school for the end-of-year show and the last day (spent mostly eating junk food and signing the children’s shirts and autograph books), up to the Yorkshire Dales (via Lancaster would you believe) for the staff weekend away cut off from the world, go on walks and through a cave, come back home, and finally relax.

This post will of course be focusing on my pre-course which basically was a subject knowledge enhancement course (or SKE) in secondary mathematics, and it served mainly to get us ready for the PgCE, get our knowledge up to scratch, and get us thinking of ways we'd explain a concept to a child who doesn't understand the first time, which demands an incredibly deep subject knowledge well beyond merely knowing one method how to do something like solve a formula or work out an area, and this was reflected in the intensity of the course! I was lucky enough to get a break on the Tuesday though for something which I guess isn't that important, just graduating from Lancaster with a 2:2 in Spanish Studies and Mathematics, I was actually disappointed with that grade at first until everyone's reaction was "wow, so you did maths and Spanish? That must've been hard!" So the general consensus has been 'well done on surviving', which I won't lie, at times it felt like that was what I was just about doing. And it means I'm basically the only one on the PgCE (of non-foreign heritage at least) that can boast multilingualism, as all of the MFL PgCE students are based on the campus in London!

Wednesday and Thursday saw a return to the workload although it was at the same time very stimulating and informative, the main thing I took away from one of the days is just what the QTS that I will gain at the end of my PgCE entitles me to do, which is to teach any subject that isn't swimming in any secondary school in the EU, I don't even officially need any language qualifications for that country! I could in theory teach art and design in a secondary school in the Czech Republic - not that I plan to.

All in all the week has given me a lot to think about and a whole range of ideas to prepare for when I first start the course and my placements in the schools.