Consultancy Underway
After successfully working with St Paul’s Girls school on their GCSE Drama Coursework drafts, I’m now into planning for consultancy training at Dame Elizabeth Cadbury Technology College. I’m working with an NQT (won’t mention names for privacy) doing a maternity cover who has been thrown in at the deep end (like so many of us Drama teachers when we start out). It’s his first foray into the world of GCSE having taught BTEC with another teacher whilst training. Got him booked onto two courses today and found a load of info that will help him with paperwork and such (thanks to SS for that). Just sorting out dates and timetable of training for him now.
It reminds me of how scary the whole thing was back when I started out. I was straight out of Uni thinking, “How hard can it be?” Then found out just how very hard it was. I had a lot of people willing to support me but a couple seemed to forget that I was learning how to plan, teach, assess, discipline, climb the paperwork mountain, get my head around the school system, etc, all at once. But I had to do it. Simple as.
Unless a school is able to support a large creative department or you share post 16 courses with other schools, you often find Drama teachers working pretty much in isolation. There are the odd moderation and training courses to get your heads together, but work load often prevents much more than that. It doesn’t have to be a ‘bad’ thing, it’s just part of the job. The point lies in whether or not you decide to rise to the challenge, to make those connections, to get the training, to take every opportunity to improve your working practice.
So as a consultant I will be supportive but I won’t pull any punches. We’re dealing with young people who trust us to guide them through their exam. Fortunately I’m training someone who’s capable of doing just that … with a little guidance of course 
