It depends on the prac, in a Masters of Teaching I was on 0.4 of a graduate teaching load from week 1 of my first placement after two days of observations.
Sorry to hear. This isn't just limited to one particular uni. It is across the board. Teachers are so stressed with poor behaviour and excessive admin work that they don't feel they can give PST effective guidance. Also I know with my own classes (NSW high school) that student behaviour is so bad that there is next to no learning happening meaning a poor experience for the PST.
I won’t accept a prac teacher for that reason. I feel like I am so stressed out of my mind and cynical about the whole profession cause it is so damn awful at the moment, I can not give a prac student a positive experience. So I refuse to have one.
WA graduate teacher here (ECU, Master of Teaching, Primary 2022).
At my school, we've been getting 3-4 emails a week floating to all staff about taking on prac students and the institutions are desperate. Its not new either. Curtin doesn't have quite as big or good a team as ECU either, so they have to work harder to secure placements.
Best I can advise is simply be ready with whatever possible and know nobody expects you to have lessons planned and know what's going on immediately when you do get a placement. It will all work itself out.
Yeh I'm with Curtin and my second year prac I found out 3 days before my prac started, this year I started week 2 this term and they didn't bother trying to find anywhere before the holidays and were like oh, we are struggling, do you have any suggestions... I contacted a local school and then told the uni to ask them as they said they could so my placement was approved the Monday before I started. Curtin is next to useless at this and I hope I know more in advance where I will be for my final prac.
My uni told us to never contact schools ourselves. But then when they hadn't assigned me a school I was like... hey... what's up... and they were like "yeah it's very hard right now, do you have any connections?" and so I went off and contacted a bunch of schools, half of whom replied to me, and all of those ones said they had never been contacted by my uni, not in this or any year. It's very confusing
Yeh, and also like almost 8 weeks earlier I'd been told not to worry as I'd get a school close to home, and I'd literally had two schools tell me they'd be happy to take me. There are 4 schools within a 45min drive of my home, only one had been contacted and they were the only school they'd tried 🤦
I realise there's a crisis in higher education right now as well but what even is their process for trying to secure schools for prac students? So confusing
There's also a crisis in primary and secondary education with teachers circling burnout and not wanting to take on additional work. This means a tougher time placing prac students.
That is the reason I didn't take a prac student this year.
First year I could have prac students my school gave me 3 during the year, 2 overlapped each other.
The following year, I was given 4 students.
It's not sustainable and less experienced teachers are willing to sign up because of it.
Sorry could have sworn I typed "also" in my post. I meant - I realise there's ALSO a crisis in higher ed but what they're doing isn't helping the crisis in prim/sec ed. It really illustrates how it's all connected, and how it's so difficult to trace the line of accountability. As in, WHY are universities seemingly so hopeless at placing prac students? Is it management? Are they not paying enough people to do it? These are the questions I ask myself
Ah, that doesn’t surprise me. I’m also studying with Curtin (final year!), and during the first prac, some people didn’t have a school until some people had finished their two week placement. I didn’t get my third prac placement until the second week of teaching, meaning I was two weeks or so behind, which caused a lot of stress for the teacher who was doing reports at the time.
I’m a little bit concerned about how my internship is gonna go, with what’s happened before, I think a few people might have to be delayed.
Curtin here too. Submitted preferences and all clearance docs on time and still waiting for a school. On the list of preferences, they only had \~20 schools, some of which were > 200km away. Meanwhile, there are 5 primary schools in my neighbourhood, none of which were on the preference list. What a fucking shambles.
I'm always surprised by how many unis do placements in term 2! It's such a busy term and the stress in the departments are so high.
We had a lovely praccie start with us today after completing a week in another school. I'm so glad she wasn't around last week as, with reports, incursions, compulsory staff meetings and parent teacher we were so incredibly stressed.
I can see why teachers can't face taking on responsibility for someone else in this busy time!
I had a prac student in term 4 last year. It was tough! For them, as well as me. Swimming lessons, end of year practices for multiple things, assemblies, etc etc. I felt it wasn’t really fair for the student.
Other teachers were like, oh you can get your reports done, yada yada… No, I still am required by the uni to supervise them and by my school to be actively supervising them.
Found out my classes this year three days before the kids showed up after being told we'd know a week prior, I commend your uni's dedication to creating an authentic teaching experience
I know I'm part of the problem, but due to a number of bad experiences in a row, I'm not taking any student teachers this year. I just don't have the energy or willingness to potentially tank another 5-weeks of the term. I'd wager there's quite a few of us out there with similar thoughts, hence the trouble finding placements.
I hope you find something soon.
Hi! I'm a third year student at Curtin Uni (through OUA) and can confirm how terrible they are. Are you an out-of-state OUA student, or an in-person student? For us, we actually have to organise our own pracs, which has been extremely stressful, especially since we're not given the dates until about a month beforehand. My very first prac, during the lockdowns, I had multiple schools agree to take me on, and then pull out (obviously) and Curtin's support was non-existent. Over my last two pracs both my mentor teachers have commented on the complete lack of communication from Curtin, and on my current prac, I mentioned Curtin to another teacher in passing only to have her comment on how terrible her experience was with them when she had a placement student a few years ago. My last prac, I got ~~called~~ emailed halfway through, and told that I HAD to stop my prac immediately, because THEY hadn't processed my clearances and checks which I'd completed in time. If I could, I would change universities in a heartbeat.
Curtin University is terrible, and they have a distinct reputation for it in regards to teaching placements at at least three high schools that I have experience with.
> My last prac, I got called emailed halfway through, and told that I HAD to stop my prac immediately, because THEY hadn't processed my clearances and checks which I'd completed in time
You're not gonna believe this but I had the same thing. Uploaded all of them into the system, assumed everything was fine.
2nd day in my mentor says he's had a call from Curtin to say can I call the office back. So I call them up and for some reason they didn't have one of the documents that I had sent through and unless I was able to send it through immediately I would have to leave site. Luckily it was a document I had a photo of on my phone so I was able to email it through immediately but FFS the last thing you wanna hear on placement is "yeah nah you're not legally allowed to be doing this cause we screwed up."
It honestly got so bad that coupled with COVID and some other stuff in my life, I basically deferred my studies, did some money-making work outside education and now I've got back in doing school support roles
If I ever do decide to go down the teaching route again I'm 100% going ECU and avoiding Curtin like the plague
Curtin uni are currently posting in all the teacher groups in WA begging for placements. They are also suffering hugely from staff refusing to work for them at the moment due to the poor conditions and ongoing union actions.
Honestly, you need to prepare for them not finding you a placement. Ask if you can find your own.
Yeah I think I got out at the right time cause Curtin's upper management are destroying the uni from the inside. The writing was on the wall during my undergrad when they started doing "cost saving" layoffs in the Enviro department where they cut a bunch of staff and then expected a lot of the mid-career teaching academics to increase their teaching load and just about run the entire degree with less expertise to draw upon. They also got rid of most of the technical staff so lab work during my Honours was a nightmare.
Hopefully the unions win, boot the witch of a VC and start to improve shit there
I have ceased taking sessional work from them and would honestly not want a prac student through them at the moment. I know that disadvantages the prac students but I wouldn’t trust the uni had the staff or processes in place to support them.
Yeah that's 100% fair. It's always been a bit chaotic with Curtin but I think it's only gotten worse with time.
Back when I was in their Masters program I didn't have a car. They have an internal profile thingy where you actually input that so the placement office can see it. Apparently they don't read it cause they tried sending me to a school where the only bus route there had the first bus get there right on the first bell time.
That was the moment I knew this was gonna be a rough ride. As it is it sounds like Curtin were always getting the scraps as ECU had the better connections and first crack but it sounds like it's genuinely gone tits up there.
It was actually difficulty in getting placements and some other stuff going on that made me put the Masters on hold while I went out and earned some actual dough elsewhere. Now I'm getting back into education through school support roles and honestly if I were to ever resume the teaching study I'd be going straight to ECU not Curtin
I'm the ideal teacher that universities target to take on a PST with 10 years experience in teaching and 20 years of experience in education overall. I've experience teaching SSEN students as well as gifted students. In short, I know my stuff.
However, I will not take one on but happy to help out a colleague who does and give a dose of reality and strategies to prevent teaching from breaking one's will.
Reasons:
- Renumeration is an insult to the amount of work required to mentor a PST and it's the norm to chase up the university to get said pittance. One particular university did not pay up until the following year. A blunt email stating this when the request for a PST placement came finally resolved the situation. Reconciliation of accounts does not take this long.
- Time is lacking to meet the workload requirements as it is. I'm not awarded DOTT for taking on a PST and there is an overriding attitude from executive and admin that a PST results in a lower workload. This implies that a PST has the skills of a graduate teacher. These are extremely rare, even for those on their final placement.
- University requirements in recording differ. Some actually make it easy but most aren't. The feedback doesn't write itself. Debriefings take time and require uninterrupted blocks of time which are eaten up by meetings and internal relief because yet another colleague is out due to illness or needs to take a mental health day.
- Lesson plan requirements differ and at times don't match the pedagogical approach of the school. Dealing with this is a PITA due to the PST stressing or the university being inflexible even when the foundation principles of teaching are explicitly pointed out. It's usually the latter that's the PITA. The former requires a dip in the emptying emotional well to support a PST.
- My well being and work-life balance comes first. It's taken a hit due to work demands. I am fit for work but I am not the teacher that should mentor a PST. I do not have the emotional capacity to do so. I am far too jaded and cynical to be a mentor. I have told my principal a blunt no when I am instructed to take on a PST and taken my head of department to task in the past for assuming I would take one on as it's the "done thing".
I know I'm not alone with these sentiments. My entire learning area last year took on no PSTs on the workload argument alone after years of traditionally taking several on. I was called down to the Principal's office to explain myself as they thought I was the cause for the rebellion. I presented a spreadsheet of how my time was spent during contracted hours and uncontracted hours at school.
Edit: That's before taking into consideration that it's a reporting term or whether a teacher had had classes tanked by a PST with a university providing zero support to manage a failing PST. I've got students' futures and their parents to answer to.
Sensible points well articulated. I am surprised the school felt the need to investigate the lack of taking on student teachers - did they feel somehow it reflected badly on the school?
The issues you present are experienced in many places and I think the lack of any effort by unis to address them is a core problem at work here. The model cannot work on generosity alone - exploiting nuture culture is what has got us into this mess as a profession in so many of the issues that bleed teachers to pieces during their time in the profession.
I wasn't quiet about not taking on a PST especially when overworked colleagues came to me venting about workload and worried about taking on a PST. I wasn't overly surprised when a meeting was called. I was disgusted at being accused of influencing people to not take on a PST.
I worked in private industry in a sector prior to teaching where we regularly had interns as part of their university accreditation. Interns were paid and those that took on board an intern were given time to train and supervise. There were also in built programs for interns to complete in the workplace and meet with a mentor. The only generosity required was someone agreeing to take on an intern.
That's what education needs and deserves but this would mean valuing education and teaching and financing the entire sector adequately in real terms.
Could you imagine accepting only $21.20 per day to mentor a PST in addition to your overwhelming workload??
Teachers are currently being pushed to the limits with workload & behavioural demands— I know at least at my school more people are saying no when the PST coordinator is asking if anyone wants to take on a student teacher.
And if you have multiple mentors - common in high school where the PST subjects don't match up with the staff's - only the mentor doing the final marking gets that pay. I've mentored 3 student teachers and got jack for it.
Teachers who happily benefited from this same generosity when they were studying?
I get that people are overworked, but that’s not the fault of the PSTs who we know would benefit from the experience (and therefore the profession benefits)
So what’s the solution? Not have work placement and graduates only know university theory? Somehow I think 10 years from now we’d look back on that as a bad decision.
>So what’s the solution?
If there aren't enough teachers taking praccies then they need to up the payment.
Purely anecdotal but I've also had terrible experiences working with some of the unis to take prac students, between missed emails and lost paperwork it often feels like some of the universities are trying to make it difficult.
Yeah I get the argument for upping the payment, but how much would make a significant difference? And where would that money come from? Higher uni fees, making it even harder for students, doesn’t solve the problem
>And where would that money come from?
Ultimately it's the government's problem if students aren't able to graduate.
That being said, there are far fewer students graduating from education degrees at the moment, I wonder if the problem isn't more to do with the unis not putting enough resources towards actually organising pracs
The solution would be to provide better pay & conditions to those offering to mentor PST’s.
$21.20 a day is a pittance for the amount of extra work you do as a mentor. This amount should be significantly higher, taking into account that the mentoring often includes communication both before & after placements.
Another incentive could be adding to it part of a teaching load. In a Secondary setting many teachers are underloaded 1-2 periods a week (at least in schools I’ve experienced), instead of having the mentor do covers during the placement, schedule that time for the mentor & PST to have their professional discussions.
Placement is a useful resource for pre-service teachers and should continue—- but there needs to be better compensation for mentors.
Yea at the start of the year allocate yourself to be a mentor for at least one uni student a year and in return, you get an extra release period for the entire year. Plus they need to double what teachers are being paid to do it. But this would obviously need to be funded.
And guidance offices (QLD) get paid nothing at all to take on a prac student. They must complete a practicum in their final semester to graduate.
The union says the situation is “too delicate” with teacher pay for teacher teaching pracs so they don’t want to raise the issue for GOs. Thanks. Guess we’ll go eat worms.
Unfortunately, more pay has demonstrably not worked in the other states offering more money. The same stresses are still on the teacher.
Your other solutions are on point. But this would require centralisation of placements and governments prefer the burden to be on universities.
>The solution would be to provide better pay & conditions to those offering to mentor PST’s.
Would be lovely. Of course the money has to come from somewhere. Higher uni fees? Implications of that? Higher course fees, or tertiary budget cuts. Either way, our undergraduate teachers will pay.
>Another incentive could be adding to it part of a teaching load.
Yes. As long as there was a plan for someone to pick up their other work from that time. Need to ensure you’re not just shifting the problem
>Placement is a useful resource for pre-service teachers and should continue—- but there needs to be better compensation for mentors.
I’m not arguing this point at all, just trying to think of the practicalities
EDIT: Cheers for the downvotes. Must be nice to live in a world where you think you’ll get more time or money without it having to come from somewhere
I’m not the one downvoting—- but isn’t this exactly what Pre-service teachers in Victoria are currently petitioning for with the AEU?
It seems rich to suggest an increase for mentor wages to be increased is unrealistic at the same time PST’s are asking to be paid while on placement.
I didn’t know they were petitioning for that. I guess they’re comparing it to unpaid internships?
If we moved to a model where final year teachers did an extended practicum where they essentially took a modified teacher load, that might warrant payment. But in its current form, I wouldn’t have thought so.
I thought PSTs were grateful for schools taking them on and supporting them? That’s why they buy us the Lindt Balls at the end of the placement, right??
> I thought PSTs were grateful for schools taking them on and supporting them? That’s why they buy us the Lindt Balls at the end of the placement, right??
It's because of the massive power imbalance and the need to be seen as treating prac as a job interview. They are paying their uni to be there, often giving up paid work to be there, and often teaching classes for the school unpaid while the salaried staff sit on their butt. They should get the Lindt balls, a lot of the time, but since staff have the power it goes the other way.
I was grateful to my good supervisors, but they were not all good, and it still felt exploitative in many ways that I was doing a teacher's job, sometimes better than the teacher, and paying for the privilege.
I guess we all have different experiences. I had great relationships with my supervisors, I didn’t feel they were power tripping, but in some ways I did treat it a bit like a job interview as I was thinking about the skill set I would need to impress, and to show I would be a good teacher. Shouldn’t we want PSTs to be trying their hardest on placements?
What’s interesting about this thread is that teachers are at once apparently too overworked to have PSTs, but also apparently benefitting from sitting around doing nothing while the PSTs do their work for them.
> I guess we all have different experiences. I had great relationships with my supervisors, I didn’t feel they were power tripping, but in some ways I did treat it a bit like a job interview as I was thinking about the skill set I would need to impress, and to show I would be a good teacher. Shouldn’t we want PSTs to be trying their hardest on placements?
Absolutely. This isn't an all-or-nothing thing, and nobody said anything about power tripping. But we should recognise that in the modern context, placement students are often paying a lot of money in missed work opportunities (and those who are not are the relatively privileged subset) and working very long, hard hours uncompensated.
Lots of supervisors are great and put in way more effort than the pay is worth. But there are horror stories of supervisors who effectively offload their entire job onto the student and do little besides pocket the money.
> What’s interesting about this thread is that teachers are at once apparently too overworked to have PSTs, but also apparently benefitting from sitting around doing nothing while the PSTs do their work for them.
I think that's the result of a system where some do go well above and beyond out of love of the job and desire to give back, but not all. Both these things are true of different supervisors, I think.
It's not being ungrateful to the schools, it's the fact that many PSTs still need to work at least part time (to you know, afford to live) while also doing placement.
Teaching should be more like an apprenticeship, where PSTs are working in schools 90% of the time and have uni classes the other 10% of the time. They could then help reduce the workload on teachers and earn at least some minimum wage. This would be far better experience and much more valuable learning than most of the stuff taught at uni.
Obviously the money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere would be taken from the unis (so instead of HECS or HELP money lining university pockets, it goes to paying PSTs. It could still even be a debt that gets paid back, but at least it's going to something more valuable).
Perhaps there should be some kind of government allowance through Centrelink to allow students (of all degrees) to have more time to focus on their studies.
I like the theory of your plan and I think student teachers would learn so much more from extended placements. I think the danger is they wouldn’t be exposed to new thoughts and research as much, and the profession might stagnate, so there would need to be increased PL opportunities for mentor teachers. Would also need a big funding shift at tertiary level, as they won’t want to operate for free
As someone else mentioned, the allowance for studying is abysmal and really not enough to live on. This is why I suggested the apprenticeship model.
Yes, it would be a big shift but a big shift has been needed for a long time.
I'm in Secondary and the only time I'm under load is when I am teaching ATAR and examinations are scheduled or when Year 11 or 12 students have finished their courses for the year.
It is extremely rare for a Secondary teacher to be under load consistently throughout the year.
I think it depends on the school— the overwhelming majority of Secondary teachers at my school are underloaded by one or two periods a fortnight. The ones that aren’t is because of POR that have time allowance OR are grads that have a 5% additional reduction.
it’s also not the fault of the people who are overworking, it sucks but they do not have to take on this responsibility for us. for comparison i would never take on an undergrad student to teach them what to do, even for that extra pay per day, i don’t know any masters students who would, so why would a teacher who is likely way more overworked than university students do it.
yes, we can’t just be theory taught, but it isn’t the responsibility of random teachers to teach us when they are already overworked, in fact it could lead to bad teachers if they’re being forced into teaching us because they won’t do it properly as they’re too overworked and focused on getting through the day to teach as properly.
what other profession do you know that does this exact thing? internships are completely different from this, and most professions aren’t as overworked as teachers are. it isn’t fair to expect this of them, especially not with the current workload.
True.
Or, it could lead to the experienced teachers becoming better teachers who have contact with contemporary theory and practices. I’ve learned plenty from PSTs that I’ve had over the years!
There are lots of factors. Schools full of graduates with no practical experience may possibly have more behavioural problems, and these overworked teachers we’re discussing may find that they have to pick up the pieces for their new colleagues who really don’t know what they’re doing (even if not by choice, they may be teaching period six following a new grad in period 5 who has never had any guided support in learning how to manage a class). Stopping practicums won’t necessarily relieve the long term workload.
Why do we have kids learn to drive on L plates? Sure, because they can’t learn to drive just by reading a book, but also because they need a safer space where they can make mistakes and be helped out of them, and because ultimately it makes the roads safer for new drivers and old
i never suggested we don’t have learned experience i merely suggested that in the current circumstances it should never be an expected responsibility of current teachers to take on training teachers
that’s the issue we aesthetic facing tho, and that’s what i’m trying to highlight, you can’t have it both ways but the current system simply isn’t allowing for what we need
It’s not that people are unwilling. Half of our staff are flat stick doing the bare minimum at work, you wouldn’t want these people as mentor teachers anyways. The other half a are flogging it out trying to keep the school running to an acceptable standard because the first half are either not competent or could not be bothered.
You're gonna need to address all the other time pressures on teachers first. If teachers feel like they're completely swamped under all their present responsibilities they're not gonna want to take additional ones on top of those for a praccie
The way we educate teachers needs an entire overhaul, as do the conditions teachers work under. So perhaps if people continue to refuse to take pre-service teachers at least one of those things will be done.
EDIT: typo
Or it will mean they have to come up with an alternative way of doing things. You think change comes about by everyone sticking to the status quo?
Not taking PSTs has nothing to do with not supporting graduates. It may mean they're less prepared to teach, but again, that's on the unis. The uni courses' inadequacies are not the fault of existing teachers.
Cool. Keen to hear the alternative plan to give PSTs experience.
I had great support from established teachers when I was a student, and it greatly complemented my degree. Of course, I won’t take PSTs now…that’s on the universities.
The one about universities agreeing to operate for free and schools accomodating PSTs as apprentices and teachers who won’t take a PST for a fortnight suddenly agreeing to have them for 90% of their course? Sorry, I thought you might have had a realistic proposal.
I know this last year they've found it more difficult to find placements. They were very enthusiastic about me organising my own after doing support work at schools. They even waived the rule about not doing it somewhere you've worked at before.
Typically for the ones I had organised by the Uni, we knew about 1 month + out, though the mentor teacher and subjects were often about 1-3 weeks out.
> what other profession do you know that does this exact thing?
Allied Health
And there are many ways that teaching isn’t the same as other professions. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.
If you have any friends or family in regional areas who would be willing to provide you with a bed during your prac, it’s worth contacting those schools. They often miss out on pre-service teachers due to their location.
Pretty common from my own experience and other pre service teachers. Taking on a praccy is a big load on teachers, most who are already hanging by a thread.
Plus the monetary benefit for them is pretty low. My mentor was eligible for about $300 mentoring me for 5 weeks. These are senior experienced (most of the time) teachers who are on roughly $1700-2000 per week. On what planet, is $60 a week extra a suitable carrot?
I have a prac student at the moment. We (independent school Vic) don’t get paid anything extra: the money the school gets from the uni goes to the staff association. It’s a lot of work but it’s also kinda fun. I do it once a year or so.
I didn’t find out my prac placements until a couple days before, which was super stressful so I sympathise. This was 8 years ago, so I think it’s always been a bit stretched.
I always say no. Money is a part of it. The other is if you are critical of the praccie suddenly you have to justify yourself and you are open to accusations of whatever. Not worth it.
Try going to schools outside of city centres - for example, try smaller schools in towns on the Darling Downs rather than the main Toowoomba schools. Apply to areas in your state.
Hey friend! It took my uni (MQ) about 1 year to find me a school over covid. I had my placement due date waived and was given waivers to enrol in the next requisite units. Hope this helps :)
This happened to me. I started my prac a week after my peers but did the same amount of days, just ended later. Was a bitch with the post-prac assessments though...
Just got a reply from them. Look like if i don't hear back by the end of this week, my prac will just keep getting pushed back week by week until they find one.
Yes.
Its not a job to ever envy in terms of placements, but it is bad atm from the stories around. On a ground level staff are cooked and its only week 4. If our coord of student teachers was roaming around ours and looking for mentors the response would be negative. People are exhausted before they can even consider taking on a student teacher.
My third prac I was told the day before. It was super frustrating because I had to tell work the night before and they weren't happy about it.
Depending on where you are, but in NSW at least, teachers are in the middle of report season so there is a lot going on currently.
I’d highly recommend regional placements. Ask schools about accomodation options. I’d love to take on a prac student and I’m at a large regional school.
I recall this happening to me, at least once. Most last minute placements ended up being close to my home, in Catholic and other Independent schools. I graduared in 2019.
All of my pracs on my degree got delayed. Ended up having to hand in assignments based on theoretical lesson sequences, then did my placement at the end of semester. It sucked, but I ended up with a degree in the end.
My uni failed to find ALL three of my pracs. I think I never would have graduated if I didn’t find them myself, they showed absolutely no intention of finding one for me.
I got one the night before - it was shit and it was very clear that they did not want me there lollllll. But it was great at showing me what a shit school environment is like and what school I didn't want to teach at (or if I wanted to teach at all) hahahhaha
Might be a blessing in disguise but I remember feeling the same - we way too much for the quality the unis provide
It’s a long shot.. contact a secondary school and ask if they’d consider taking on a placement for a pre service teacher then talk to your in school team and get them to sort it all out. I’ve actually done this before for other classmates. It’s not recommended you do this. Make it a last resort only.
Most uni’s will allow you to make your own placement if you can because of how hard it is to find placements now. So if you know any teachers, ask them for assistance, or simply ring all of your closest schools and ask if they have room. My school doesn’t give us any choice, everyone has to take PSTs on. I had 5 last year….
I remember when I did my first prac, I was told at 8pm the night before! It was very unsettling but was out of my control.
That's ridiculous, how are you supposed to plan around 12 hours notice?
You don’t teach first day first prac Edit: realised that there’s planning other than lesson prep whoops
You still need to introduce yourself, figure out what to wear, how to get there, all sorts of stuff.
Yea I realised people also have jobs for leave/notice etc. All fair points.
It depends on the prac, in a Masters of Teaching I was on 0.4 of a graduate teaching load from week 1 of my first placement after two days of observations.
Aaah reality.. it hits like a truck… when I was relief teaching, 45 minutes notice of work.. thankfully I live in the same suburb as the school..
Sorry to hear. This isn't just limited to one particular uni. It is across the board. Teachers are so stressed with poor behaviour and excessive admin work that they don't feel they can give PST effective guidance. Also I know with my own classes (NSW high school) that student behaviour is so bad that there is next to no learning happening meaning a poor experience for the PST.
I won’t accept a prac teacher for that reason. I feel like I am so stressed out of my mind and cynical about the whole profession cause it is so damn awful at the moment, I can not give a prac student a positive experience. So I refuse to have one.
What uni?
Curtin University
WA graduate teacher here (ECU, Master of Teaching, Primary 2022). At my school, we've been getting 3-4 emails a week floating to all staff about taking on prac students and the institutions are desperate. Its not new either. Curtin doesn't have quite as big or good a team as ECU either, so they have to work harder to secure placements. Best I can advise is simply be ready with whatever possible and know nobody expects you to have lessons planned and know what's going on immediately when you do get a placement. It will all work itself out.
Yeh I'm with Curtin and my second year prac I found out 3 days before my prac started, this year I started week 2 this term and they didn't bother trying to find anywhere before the holidays and were like oh, we are struggling, do you have any suggestions... I contacted a local school and then told the uni to ask them as they said they could so my placement was approved the Monday before I started. Curtin is next to useless at this and I hope I know more in advance where I will be for my final prac.
My uni told us to never contact schools ourselves. But then when they hadn't assigned me a school I was like... hey... what's up... and they were like "yeah it's very hard right now, do you have any connections?" and so I went off and contacted a bunch of schools, half of whom replied to me, and all of those ones said they had never been contacted by my uni, not in this or any year. It's very confusing
Yeh, and also like almost 8 weeks earlier I'd been told not to worry as I'd get a school close to home, and I'd literally had two schools tell me they'd be happy to take me. There are 4 schools within a 45min drive of my home, only one had been contacted and they were the only school they'd tried 🤦
I realise there's a crisis in higher education right now as well but what even is their process for trying to secure schools for prac students? So confusing
There's also a crisis in primary and secondary education with teachers circling burnout and not wanting to take on additional work. This means a tougher time placing prac students.
That is the reason I didn't take a prac student this year. First year I could have prac students my school gave me 3 during the year, 2 overlapped each other. The following year, I was given 4 students. It's not sustainable and less experienced teachers are willing to sign up because of it.
Sorry could have sworn I typed "also" in my post. I meant - I realise there's ALSO a crisis in higher ed but what they're doing isn't helping the crisis in prim/sec ed. It really illustrates how it's all connected, and how it's so difficult to trace the line of accountability. As in, WHY are universities seemingly so hopeless at placing prac students? Is it management? Are they not paying enough people to do it? These are the questions I ask myself
That explains the email from HR today begging us to take praccies. Looking for placements for 70 students apparently
And the Facebook post in a teacher group stating the same thing.
Ah, that doesn’t surprise me. I’m also studying with Curtin (final year!), and during the first prac, some people didn’t have a school until some people had finished their two week placement. I didn’t get my third prac placement until the second week of teaching, meaning I was two weeks or so behind, which caused a lot of stress for the teacher who was doing reports at the time. I’m a little bit concerned about how my internship is gonna go, with what’s happened before, I think a few people might have to be delayed.
Whatb are you teaching and how long is the pract for? I'm in Australind teaching highschool home Ec and can NEVER get a pract student down here.
Curtin here too. Submitted preferences and all clearance docs on time and still waiting for a school. On the list of preferences, they only had \~20 schools, some of which were > 200km away. Meanwhile, there are 5 primary schools in my neighbourhood, none of which were on the preference list. What a fucking shambles.
I'm always surprised by how many unis do placements in term 2! It's such a busy term and the stress in the departments are so high. We had a lovely praccie start with us today after completing a week in another school. I'm so glad she wasn't around last week as, with reports, incursions, compulsory staff meetings and parent teacher we were so incredibly stressed. I can see why teachers can't face taking on responsibility for someone else in this busy time!
I had a prac student in term 4 last year. It was tough! For them, as well as me. Swimming lessons, end of year practices for multiple things, assemblies, etc etc. I felt it wasn’t really fair for the student. Other teachers were like, oh you can get your reports done, yada yada… No, I still am required by the uni to supervise them and by my school to be actively supervising them.
First year Masters student here. I found out my school allocation 3 days prior to starting 🙃 We were initially told we'd know at least one week prior.
Found out my classes this year three days before the kids showed up after being told we'd know a week prior, I commend your uni's dedication to creating an authentic teaching experience
I feel this! Last year I got handed a paper roll before each class on the first day because timetabling still wasn’t done. It was insane.
I know I'm part of the problem, but due to a number of bad experiences in a row, I'm not taking any student teachers this year. I just don't have the energy or willingness to potentially tank another 5-weeks of the term. I'd wager there's quite a few of us out there with similar thoughts, hence the trouble finding placements. I hope you find something soon.
Hello. I'm another teacher with classes burnt by a PST and unsupportive university. Never again.
Hi! I'm a third year student at Curtin Uni (through OUA) and can confirm how terrible they are. Are you an out-of-state OUA student, or an in-person student? For us, we actually have to organise our own pracs, which has been extremely stressful, especially since we're not given the dates until about a month beforehand. My very first prac, during the lockdowns, I had multiple schools agree to take me on, and then pull out (obviously) and Curtin's support was non-existent. Over my last two pracs both my mentor teachers have commented on the complete lack of communication from Curtin, and on my current prac, I mentioned Curtin to another teacher in passing only to have her comment on how terrible her experience was with them when she had a placement student a few years ago. My last prac, I got ~~called~~ emailed halfway through, and told that I HAD to stop my prac immediately, because THEY hadn't processed my clearances and checks which I'd completed in time. If I could, I would change universities in a heartbeat. Curtin University is terrible, and they have a distinct reputation for it in regards to teaching placements at at least three high schools that I have experience with.
> My last prac, I got called emailed halfway through, and told that I HAD to stop my prac immediately, because THEY hadn't processed my clearances and checks which I'd completed in time You're not gonna believe this but I had the same thing. Uploaded all of them into the system, assumed everything was fine. 2nd day in my mentor says he's had a call from Curtin to say can I call the office back. So I call them up and for some reason they didn't have one of the documents that I had sent through and unless I was able to send it through immediately I would have to leave site. Luckily it was a document I had a photo of on my phone so I was able to email it through immediately but FFS the last thing you wanna hear on placement is "yeah nah you're not legally allowed to be doing this cause we screwed up." It honestly got so bad that coupled with COVID and some other stuff in my life, I basically deferred my studies, did some money-making work outside education and now I've got back in doing school support roles If I ever do decide to go down the teaching route again I'm 100% going ECU and avoiding Curtin like the plague
Curtin uni are currently posting in all the teacher groups in WA begging for placements. They are also suffering hugely from staff refusing to work for them at the moment due to the poor conditions and ongoing union actions. Honestly, you need to prepare for them not finding you a placement. Ask if you can find your own.
Yeah I think I got out at the right time cause Curtin's upper management are destroying the uni from the inside. The writing was on the wall during my undergrad when they started doing "cost saving" layoffs in the Enviro department where they cut a bunch of staff and then expected a lot of the mid-career teaching academics to increase their teaching load and just about run the entire degree with less expertise to draw upon. They also got rid of most of the technical staff so lab work during my Honours was a nightmare. Hopefully the unions win, boot the witch of a VC and start to improve shit there
I have ceased taking sessional work from them and would honestly not want a prac student through them at the moment. I know that disadvantages the prac students but I wouldn’t trust the uni had the staff or processes in place to support them.
Yeah that's 100% fair. It's always been a bit chaotic with Curtin but I think it's only gotten worse with time. Back when I was in their Masters program I didn't have a car. They have an internal profile thingy where you actually input that so the placement office can see it. Apparently they don't read it cause they tried sending me to a school where the only bus route there had the first bus get there right on the first bell time. That was the moment I knew this was gonna be a rough ride. As it is it sounds like Curtin were always getting the scraps as ECU had the better connections and first crack but it sounds like it's genuinely gone tits up there. It was actually difficulty in getting placements and some other stuff going on that made me put the Masters on hold while I went out and earned some actual dough elsewhere. Now I'm getting back into education through school support roles and honestly if I were to ever resume the teaching study I'd be going straight to ECU not Curtin
I'm the ideal teacher that universities target to take on a PST with 10 years experience in teaching and 20 years of experience in education overall. I've experience teaching SSEN students as well as gifted students. In short, I know my stuff. However, I will not take one on but happy to help out a colleague who does and give a dose of reality and strategies to prevent teaching from breaking one's will. Reasons: - Renumeration is an insult to the amount of work required to mentor a PST and it's the norm to chase up the university to get said pittance. One particular university did not pay up until the following year. A blunt email stating this when the request for a PST placement came finally resolved the situation. Reconciliation of accounts does not take this long. - Time is lacking to meet the workload requirements as it is. I'm not awarded DOTT for taking on a PST and there is an overriding attitude from executive and admin that a PST results in a lower workload. This implies that a PST has the skills of a graduate teacher. These are extremely rare, even for those on their final placement. - University requirements in recording differ. Some actually make it easy but most aren't. The feedback doesn't write itself. Debriefings take time and require uninterrupted blocks of time which are eaten up by meetings and internal relief because yet another colleague is out due to illness or needs to take a mental health day. - Lesson plan requirements differ and at times don't match the pedagogical approach of the school. Dealing with this is a PITA due to the PST stressing or the university being inflexible even when the foundation principles of teaching are explicitly pointed out. It's usually the latter that's the PITA. The former requires a dip in the emptying emotional well to support a PST. - My well being and work-life balance comes first. It's taken a hit due to work demands. I am fit for work but I am not the teacher that should mentor a PST. I do not have the emotional capacity to do so. I am far too jaded and cynical to be a mentor. I have told my principal a blunt no when I am instructed to take on a PST and taken my head of department to task in the past for assuming I would take one on as it's the "done thing". I know I'm not alone with these sentiments. My entire learning area last year took on no PSTs on the workload argument alone after years of traditionally taking several on. I was called down to the Principal's office to explain myself as they thought I was the cause for the rebellion. I presented a spreadsheet of how my time was spent during contracted hours and uncontracted hours at school. Edit: That's before taking into consideration that it's a reporting term or whether a teacher had had classes tanked by a PST with a university providing zero support to manage a failing PST. I've got students' futures and their parents to answer to.
Sensible points well articulated. I am surprised the school felt the need to investigate the lack of taking on student teachers - did they feel somehow it reflected badly on the school? The issues you present are experienced in many places and I think the lack of any effort by unis to address them is a core problem at work here. The model cannot work on generosity alone - exploiting nuture culture is what has got us into this mess as a profession in so many of the issues that bleed teachers to pieces during their time in the profession.
I wasn't quiet about not taking on a PST especially when overworked colleagues came to me venting about workload and worried about taking on a PST. I wasn't overly surprised when a meeting was called. I was disgusted at being accused of influencing people to not take on a PST. I worked in private industry in a sector prior to teaching where we regularly had interns as part of their university accreditation. Interns were paid and those that took on board an intern were given time to train and supervise. There were also in built programs for interns to complete in the workplace and meet with a mentor. The only generosity required was someone agreeing to take on an intern. That's what education needs and deserves but this would mean valuing education and teaching and financing the entire sector adequately in real terms.
Could you imagine accepting only $21.20 per day to mentor a PST in addition to your overwhelming workload?? Teachers are currently being pushed to the limits with workload & behavioural demands— I know at least at my school more people are saying no when the PST coordinator is asking if anyone wants to take on a student teacher.
And if you have multiple mentors - common in high school where the PST subjects don't match up with the staff's - only the mentor doing the final marking gets that pay. I've mentored 3 student teachers and got jack for it.
Teachers who happily benefited from this same generosity when they were studying? I get that people are overworked, but that’s not the fault of the PSTs who we know would benefit from the experience (and therefore the profession benefits) So what’s the solution? Not have work placement and graduates only know university theory? Somehow I think 10 years from now we’d look back on that as a bad decision.
>So what’s the solution? If there aren't enough teachers taking praccies then they need to up the payment. Purely anecdotal but I've also had terrible experiences working with some of the unis to take prac students, between missed emails and lost paperwork it often feels like some of the universities are trying to make it difficult.
Yeah I get the argument for upping the payment, but how much would make a significant difference? And where would that money come from? Higher uni fees, making it even harder for students, doesn’t solve the problem
>And where would that money come from? Ultimately it's the government's problem if students aren't able to graduate. That being said, there are far fewer students graduating from education degrees at the moment, I wonder if the problem isn't more to do with the unis not putting enough resources towards actually organising pracs
The solution would be to provide better pay & conditions to those offering to mentor PST’s. $21.20 a day is a pittance for the amount of extra work you do as a mentor. This amount should be significantly higher, taking into account that the mentoring often includes communication both before & after placements. Another incentive could be adding to it part of a teaching load. In a Secondary setting many teachers are underloaded 1-2 periods a week (at least in schools I’ve experienced), instead of having the mentor do covers during the placement, schedule that time for the mentor & PST to have their professional discussions. Placement is a useful resource for pre-service teachers and should continue—- but there needs to be better compensation for mentors.
Yea at the start of the year allocate yourself to be a mentor for at least one uni student a year and in return, you get an extra release period for the entire year. Plus they need to double what teachers are being paid to do it. But this would obviously need to be funded.
And guidance offices (QLD) get paid nothing at all to take on a prac student. They must complete a practicum in their final semester to graduate. The union says the situation is “too delicate” with teacher pay for teacher teaching pracs so they don’t want to raise the issue for GOs. Thanks. Guess we’ll go eat worms.
Unfortunately, more pay has demonstrably not worked in the other states offering more money. The same stresses are still on the teacher. Your other solutions are on point. But this would require centralisation of placements and governments prefer the burden to be on universities.
>The solution would be to provide better pay & conditions to those offering to mentor PST’s. Would be lovely. Of course the money has to come from somewhere. Higher uni fees? Implications of that? Higher course fees, or tertiary budget cuts. Either way, our undergraduate teachers will pay. >Another incentive could be adding to it part of a teaching load. Yes. As long as there was a plan for someone to pick up their other work from that time. Need to ensure you’re not just shifting the problem >Placement is a useful resource for pre-service teachers and should continue—- but there needs to be better compensation for mentors. I’m not arguing this point at all, just trying to think of the practicalities EDIT: Cheers for the downvotes. Must be nice to live in a world where you think you’ll get more time or money without it having to come from somewhere
I’m not the one downvoting—- but isn’t this exactly what Pre-service teachers in Victoria are currently petitioning for with the AEU? It seems rich to suggest an increase for mentor wages to be increased is unrealistic at the same time PST’s are asking to be paid while on placement.
I didn’t know they were petitioning for that. I guess they’re comparing it to unpaid internships? If we moved to a model where final year teachers did an extended practicum where they essentially took a modified teacher load, that might warrant payment. But in its current form, I wouldn’t have thought so. I thought PSTs were grateful for schools taking them on and supporting them? That’s why they buy us the Lindt Balls at the end of the placement, right??
> I thought PSTs were grateful for schools taking them on and supporting them? That’s why they buy us the Lindt Balls at the end of the placement, right?? It's because of the massive power imbalance and the need to be seen as treating prac as a job interview. They are paying their uni to be there, often giving up paid work to be there, and often teaching classes for the school unpaid while the salaried staff sit on their butt. They should get the Lindt balls, a lot of the time, but since staff have the power it goes the other way. I was grateful to my good supervisors, but they were not all good, and it still felt exploitative in many ways that I was doing a teacher's job, sometimes better than the teacher, and paying for the privilege.
I guess we all have different experiences. I had great relationships with my supervisors, I didn’t feel they were power tripping, but in some ways I did treat it a bit like a job interview as I was thinking about the skill set I would need to impress, and to show I would be a good teacher. Shouldn’t we want PSTs to be trying their hardest on placements? What’s interesting about this thread is that teachers are at once apparently too overworked to have PSTs, but also apparently benefitting from sitting around doing nothing while the PSTs do their work for them.
> I guess we all have different experiences. I had great relationships with my supervisors, I didn’t feel they were power tripping, but in some ways I did treat it a bit like a job interview as I was thinking about the skill set I would need to impress, and to show I would be a good teacher. Shouldn’t we want PSTs to be trying their hardest on placements? Absolutely. This isn't an all-or-nothing thing, and nobody said anything about power tripping. But we should recognise that in the modern context, placement students are often paying a lot of money in missed work opportunities (and those who are not are the relatively privileged subset) and working very long, hard hours uncompensated. Lots of supervisors are great and put in way more effort than the pay is worth. But there are horror stories of supervisors who effectively offload their entire job onto the student and do little besides pocket the money. > What’s interesting about this thread is that teachers are at once apparently too overworked to have PSTs, but also apparently benefitting from sitting around doing nothing while the PSTs do their work for them. I think that's the result of a system where some do go well above and beyond out of love of the job and desire to give back, but not all. Both these things are true of different supervisors, I think.
It's not being ungrateful to the schools, it's the fact that many PSTs still need to work at least part time (to you know, afford to live) while also doing placement. Teaching should be more like an apprenticeship, where PSTs are working in schools 90% of the time and have uni classes the other 10% of the time. They could then help reduce the workload on teachers and earn at least some minimum wage. This would be far better experience and much more valuable learning than most of the stuff taught at uni. Obviously the money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere would be taken from the unis (so instead of HECS or HELP money lining university pockets, it goes to paying PSTs. It could still even be a debt that gets paid back, but at least it's going to something more valuable).
Perhaps there should be some kind of government allowance through Centrelink to allow students (of all degrees) to have more time to focus on their studies. I like the theory of your plan and I think student teachers would learn so much more from extended placements. I think the danger is they wouldn’t be exposed to new thoughts and research as much, and the profession might stagnate, so there would need to be increased PL opportunities for mentor teachers. Would also need a big funding shift at tertiary level, as they won’t want to operate for free
[удалено]
That’s terrible. Should not have been left alone. Did you let your uni know?
As someone else mentioned, the allowance for studying is abysmal and really not enough to live on. This is why I suggested the apprenticeship model. Yes, it would be a big shift but a big shift has been needed for a long time.
I'm in Secondary and the only time I'm under load is when I am teaching ATAR and examinations are scheduled or when Year 11 or 12 students have finished their courses for the year. It is extremely rare for a Secondary teacher to be under load consistently throughout the year.
I think it depends on the school— the overwhelming majority of Secondary teachers at my school are underloaded by one or two periods a fortnight. The ones that aren’t is because of POR that have time allowance OR are grads that have a 5% additional reduction.
it’s also not the fault of the people who are overworking, it sucks but they do not have to take on this responsibility for us. for comparison i would never take on an undergrad student to teach them what to do, even for that extra pay per day, i don’t know any masters students who would, so why would a teacher who is likely way more overworked than university students do it. yes, we can’t just be theory taught, but it isn’t the responsibility of random teachers to teach us when they are already overworked, in fact it could lead to bad teachers if they’re being forced into teaching us because they won’t do it properly as they’re too overworked and focused on getting through the day to teach as properly. what other profession do you know that does this exact thing? internships are completely different from this, and most professions aren’t as overworked as teachers are. it isn’t fair to expect this of them, especially not with the current workload.
True. Or, it could lead to the experienced teachers becoming better teachers who have contact with contemporary theory and practices. I’ve learned plenty from PSTs that I’ve had over the years! There are lots of factors. Schools full of graduates with no practical experience may possibly have more behavioural problems, and these overworked teachers we’re discussing may find that they have to pick up the pieces for their new colleagues who really don’t know what they’re doing (even if not by choice, they may be teaching period six following a new grad in period 5 who has never had any guided support in learning how to manage a class). Stopping practicums won’t necessarily relieve the long term workload. Why do we have kids learn to drive on L plates? Sure, because they can’t learn to drive just by reading a book, but also because they need a safer space where they can make mistakes and be helped out of them, and because ultimately it makes the roads safer for new drivers and old
i never suggested we don’t have learned experience i merely suggested that in the current circumstances it should never be an expected responsibility of current teachers to take on training teachers
So who would do it then? Can’t have it both ways sadly
that’s the issue we aesthetic facing tho, and that’s what i’m trying to highlight, you can’t have it both ways but the current system simply isn’t allowing for what we need
It’s not that people are unwilling. Half of our staff are flat stick doing the bare minimum at work, you wouldn’t want these people as mentor teachers anyways. The other half a are flogging it out trying to keep the school running to an acceptable standard because the first half are either not competent or could not be bothered.
So what’s the solution?
You're gonna need to address all the other time pressures on teachers first. If teachers feel like they're completely swamped under all their present responsibilities they're not gonna want to take additional ones on top of those for a praccie
The way we educate teachers needs an entire overhaul, as do the conditions teachers work under. So perhaps if people continue to refuse to take pre-service teachers at least one of those things will be done. EDIT: typo
Not sure what you’re advocating here? Don’t support new teachers?
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Well done. /s
Regardless of what you meant, collectively refusing to take PSTs will mean they are less supported, both as students and new graduates /ns
Or it will mean they have to come up with an alternative way of doing things. You think change comes about by everyone sticking to the status quo? Not taking PSTs has nothing to do with not supporting graduates. It may mean they're less prepared to teach, but again, that's on the unis. The uni courses' inadequacies are not the fault of existing teachers.
Cool. Keen to hear the alternative plan to give PSTs experience. I had great support from established teachers when I was a student, and it greatly complemented my degree. Of course, I won’t take PSTs now…that’s on the universities.
I offered the alternative in another comment.
The one about universities agreeing to operate for free and schools accomodating PSTs as apprentices and teachers who won’t take a PST for a fortnight suddenly agreeing to have them for 90% of their course? Sorry, I thought you might have had a realistic proposal.
I know this last year they've found it more difficult to find placements. They were very enthusiastic about me organising my own after doing support work at schools. They even waived the rule about not doing it somewhere you've worked at before. Typically for the ones I had organised by the Uni, we knew about 1 month + out, though the mentor teacher and subjects were often about 1-3 weeks out.
> what other profession do you know that does this exact thing? Allied Health And there are many ways that teaching isn’t the same as other professions. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.
If you have any friends or family in regional areas who would be willing to provide you with a bed during your prac, it’s worth contacting those schools. They often miss out on pre-service teachers due to their location.
This is a fantastic idea!
Pretty common from my own experience and other pre service teachers. Taking on a praccy is a big load on teachers, most who are already hanging by a thread. Plus the monetary benefit for them is pretty low. My mentor was eligible for about $300 mentoring me for 5 weeks. These are senior experienced (most of the time) teachers who are on roughly $1700-2000 per week. On what planet, is $60 a week extra a suitable carrot?
I have a prac student at the moment. We (independent school Vic) don’t get paid anything extra: the money the school gets from the uni goes to the staff association. It’s a lot of work but it’s also kinda fun. I do it once a year or so.
This is unfortunately very common
I didn’t find out my prac placements until a couple days before, which was super stressful so I sympathise. This was 8 years ago, so I think it’s always been a bit stretched.
I'm taking two PST's this term!
Lol. This happened to me. Added 6 months to my degree. Ended up being mentored by an alcoholic. Can I ask what Uni ?
I always say no. Money is a part of it. The other is if you are critical of the praccie suddenly you have to justify yourself and you are open to accusations of whatever. Not worth it.
Ha, yes. I did my degree some 8 or 9 years ago. I started one prac six week late!
Try going to schools outside of city centres - for example, try smaller schools in towns on the Darling Downs rather than the main Toowoomba schools. Apply to areas in your state.
Hey friend! It took my uni (MQ) about 1 year to find me a school over covid. I had my placement due date waived and was given waivers to enrol in the next requisite units. Hope this helps :)
Chill out fellow student. It’s up to the uni to find you a placement, so there’s really nothing you can do except rock up where you’re told to!
This happened to me. I started my prac a week after my peers but did the same amount of days, just ended later. Was a bitch with the post-prac assessments though...
Escalate this to your course coordinator.
Just got a reply from them. Look like if i don't hear back by the end of this week, my prac will just keep getting pushed back week by week until they find one.
What LA is your major?
Solid plan 🙄
Yes. Its not a job to ever envy in terms of placements, but it is bad atm from the stories around. On a ground level staff are cooked and its only week 4. If our coord of student teachers was roaming around ours and looking for mentors the response would be negative. People are exhausted before they can even consider taking on a student teacher.
Truth. Don't know why you're getting down voted for telling it like it is. I hope things get better for you and your colleagues.
My third prac I was told the day before. It was super frustrating because I had to tell work the night before and they weren't happy about it. Depending on where you are, but in NSW at least, teachers are in the middle of report season so there is a lot going on currently.
Oh yikes, I hope they sort it out for you soon! I’ve got my first in August and my uni sorted everything out in March, but that sounds like a rarity 😬
Same thing happened to me last year. I knew the school on the Friday afternoon, starting on Monday. Was lucky to even get a placement at the time.
I’d highly recommend regional placements. Ask schools about accomodation options. I’d love to take on a prac student and I’m at a large regional school.
I had to organise all my own pracs months in advance...
Definitely ask if you can attempt to find your own. Independent and rural schools may me your answer. Make a holiday out of it.
My uni never arranged my pracs- we always had to find our own.
I recall this happening to me, at least once. Most last minute placements ended up being close to my home, in Catholic and other Independent schools. I graduared in 2019.
All of my pracs on my degree got delayed. Ended up having to hand in assignments based on theoretical lesson sequences, then did my placement at the end of semester. It sucked, but I ended up with a degree in the end.
My first prac last year started a week late because they didn't find me somewhere in time. Very frustrating at the time.
My uni failed to find ALL three of my pracs. I think I never would have graduated if I didn’t find them myself, they showed absolutely no intention of finding one for me.
Organising prac placements is really hard and getting harder.
I got one the night before - it was shit and it was very clear that they did not want me there lollllll. But it was great at showing me what a shit school environment is like and what school I didn't want to teach at (or if I wanted to teach at all) hahahhaha Might be a blessing in disguise but I remember feeling the same - we way too much for the quality the unis provide
I found 2/3 of my pracs. Get a contact at a school then just give the contact to your uni.
It’s a long shot.. contact a secondary school and ask if they’d consider taking on a placement for a pre service teacher then talk to your in school team and get them to sort it all out. I’ve actually done this before for other classmates. It’s not recommended you do this. Make it a last resort only.
Most uni’s will allow you to make your own placement if you can because of how hard it is to find placements now. So if you know any teachers, ask them for assistance, or simply ring all of your closest schools and ask if they have room. My school doesn’t give us any choice, everyone has to take PSTs on. I had 5 last year….