Teaching, England Footie and an Open Day

Teacher-To-Be

This week I began my Pre-PGCE Subject Knowledge Enhancement Course. It's basically a short course for a few weeks that will top up my knowledge in the areas of Computing and IT as that's the subject that I will hopefully be qualifying to teach in.

There's currently a huge demand for Computing teachers in particular as the skill to be able to program is becoming more desirable by the day. Here in the UK, the Government have even gone as far as claiming this year to be the Year of Code supported by initiatives like the Hour of Code.

There's also a massive push to get girls into computing as computing is a very male dominated subject and it really shouldn't be. To put things a little into perspective, in this course that I've started this week, there are only four of us females with about fourteen males. So to say that we're outnumbered is a mega understatement.

I've always been passionate about teaching and IT has always been one of those things that I have just always had an interest in. The computing and the programming, I'm not so confident in but it's definitely something I'm excited to learn more about and this course has already done me wonders. This week we have learnt the basic of Scratch (MIT Children's Programming Software) and Python (which I can confirm is as scary as it sounds!).

 

(A little dated seeing as schools are phasing out IT and phasing in Computing!)

Apart from the academic side, everyone is so lovely at the course and we all get along quite well already which helps in an environment where we are all prone to start yelling verbal abuse at our laptops!

Slow Clap for England... 

Oh dear. Need I say more?

To add to the embarrassment of losing against Uruguay, we still have to play Costa Rica even though we are definitely out of the World Cup. Plus I like how everyone was still hoping that we'd be able to squeeze our way into the next round through the outcome of the Uraguay Vs Costa Rica game.

And the amount if memes I've seen about England's performance is just amazing! Haha, it's always good to be able to laugh at yourselves!

Open Day

My feet hurt, but I wouldn't not work at my university's open days! So on Friday and Saturday we were blessed with beautiful weather for our open days for our University.As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm a Student Ambassador for my University which allows me to work at any events that the University may hold; in this case it was their Open Days.

I've worked on their open days in the past and they have always been a lot of fun. For all of the past Open Days that I have worked on, I have always been selected to do Campus Tours which is a tour of the university main campus pointing out the main buildings and facilities we have. I would get a headset microphone which would always make me feel like a 90's popstar!

Pointing out buildings like:

One fact that I always love to include is that Benedict Cumberbatch is an Alumni of the University whenever we pass the Music and Drama Building. I always have people's ears perk up at the sound of his name with a few "Ooo really??"'s. And I always like to have a bit of audience participation asking "So Benedict Cumberbatch is famously known for playing..." and I wait for an answer. Sometimes when nobody answers, I'm like "Right, all of your homework tonight is to watch Sherlock. It's mandatory!". Always gets a bit of a smile and a giggle!

This time, I was actually based as part of the Student Accommodation team processing people in the queues who wanted to go on a Student Accommodation tour and walking them to the coaches that would take them there. At first I was a bit gutted that I didn't get my usual Campus Tour Guide role but liked that I could do something a little different for my last Open Day that I would work on!

Plus they had sweets and lollipops so all was not lost!

That's me for the week!

I hope the football wasn't too disappointing for you!

Keep Smiling,

Skeena xxx