Evaluation.

Having the opportunity to do a placement in a primary school, I feel my ambition to be a teacher has become stronger whilst also making me see the difficulties, which will come with it. I feel with more experience I can overcome some of the difficulties. By difficulties, I mean becoming shy and allowing the children to take over and distract each other, if I am confident within myself and able to control, I feel I will be able to make it. My method of teaching the workshops changed throughout, in the beginning I thought they were able to handle tasks that I could, not realising they are children and think differently. This meant I had to adjust workshops to their ability, which I did find interesting to do.

The greatest challenges have been working with the children. Not knowing how to act with them and speak was a difficulty with me. I felt quite shy with them and personally did not know what to say. However, as the weeks went by I felt because I got to know the class I interacted with them more. Although in my group we all came from different backgrounds and did not know each other, I felt it was easier to communicate because they were of similar ages.  Some of children would get off topic and talk about their own lives, which was tricky to discuss because it was not important to me, what was important, was their education. Through this process, it has helped me learn of ways to keep myself focused on what I want to do and how to overcome this. I feel with more experience, I will become more confident with my speaking and working with different age groups will give me an insight of how to act with them.

As I am from a textiles background, I tried to incorporate my own practice into the workshops for the children. As textiles is about texture, I tried to bring that element in by using materials that had texture that they could feel and see. They were excited to collage and create textured pieces with this because it was different from their everyday curriculum subjects. Showing them samples of my own work fascinated them and hopefully pushes them into doing an art and textiles based subject. Giving them the knowledge of where I come from in the textiles world, helped them understand me better and allowed them to practice what I do through using suitable materials. I could push this line further by doing workshops in different organisations but aimed at children from a certain age. This would give me a variety of feedback and show me what I can improve and what that community wants. Creating workshops was exciting and a different way of thinking and so I would love to be able to do it again for a different organisation.

Unit X has been a great opportunity; it has allowed me to open my eyes on teaching in the art and textiles world. It allowed me to gain a new set of skills, which will be transferrable for my future careers. It has changed my perspective of working as a team, and has made me become more confident and to speak up about my own ideas. Although it was a team collaboration, it was made me see that are working for yourself and so you have to do things which will benefit yourself and the others around you. From this experience, I want to be able to do more experience in schools, maybe working with children that are older ages or even high school. I feel the more experience I get the more skills I will learn which will be beneficial for me and allow me to be the best. I want to continue with a PGCE course and get a CBR check so I will be able to work in any educational system. This unit has opened my mind of what I really want to and has allowed me to settle down and focus on it. I am thankful to be a part of this unit and I will be taking my new skills on board for the future.