ID Number: G00357977

Programme: B’ED

Year: 1

Subject: School Placement

Title of reflection: The Joys of Teaching

Supervisor: Seán Breen

Date of deadline: 12 th March 2018

Declaration of originality:
I declare that the work contained within this document is my own and
that I have reference any external information to the best of my
knowledge.

Signed:_ Shaun McGee____________________________________

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Introduction
In this my final school placement reflective essay I will look back on all my
past experiences. I will reflect on things I witnessed in the classroom as well
as some of the aspects of my school placement which helped make my
time there so enjoyable.

Main Body
To begin I would like to reflect on my first school placement experience in
October. This was a scary but exciting time for me going out to
experience my first taste of what it was like to be on the other side of the
classroom for once. When we arrived and were greeted by the principal I
instantly noticed something that our lecturer had been talking about in
previous lectures. The principal showed great professionalism whilst
introducing herself and the school to us. She had an excellent knowledge
of the school and each classroom which I found very impressive. This is
something I would like to bring into my own career as i think it would be
very beneficial to have a good knowledge of the entire school and not
just my own classroom and subjects. I learned a lot more about
professionalism in later school placements as well which I think will stand to
me when I go out into my secondary school placement in September.

These school placements really helped me gain an understanding of

teaching life and the classroom environment, which I will bring with me
throughout the rest of my career. I thoroughly enjoyed my time on school
placement due to many factors, the first of which I think is personal
fulfilment.

From my first placement until my last I found I had a great sense of

personal fulfilment throughout. The feeling you get when you simply help a
child with a question for the first time is something I will never forget.
Watching them progress and learn from what you have told them and to
see how much they appreciate it is a special thing. These kind of personal
interactions with the students made me want to help more and gave me
the confidence to start asking students if they needed assistance rather
than them asking me. Once I had found this confidence I began to
experiment with different techniques to help the students more
effectively. One of the first techniques I used was interactive teaching,
which was a basic technique that I felt comfortable using at the
beginning, considering I was new to the whole teaching environment. I
took some of the aspects of this technique and applied them to helping
the students. One of these aspects was two different types of questioning
"open" and "closed". "Closed questions have one clear answer, while open
questions have open ended answers" (Muijs, Reynolds, 2005, Pg 44). This is
just one example of the many methods I used which helped me gain

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another level of confidence in my ability to aid students which in turn
made it much easier for me to enjoy my time on placement.

Wubbels et al. (2014) defines the teacher–student relationship “as the

generalized interpersonal meaning students and teachers attach to their
interactions with each other” (p. 364). Another aspect of placement
which helped me enjoy my time there was the relationships I was able
build with the students. During my short time in the school I was able to
build relationships with some of the students, be it simply through playing
with the junior infant students to talking to the more senior students about
current tv shows or trends. These relationships made it easier for them to
talk to me if they had problems not just in the classroom but out in the
yard during break also (O'Connor, 2008). Building these relationships with
the students was very beneficial to me as it made it easier for me to help
them with their school work but also by making my time in the school that
much more enjoyable. This is definitely an aspect of my teaching which I
would like to carry on into my career in the future as I found it helped both
the students and myself to enjoy the class more, which in turn aided their
learning.

Conclusion
To conclude, I just want to say that I thoroughly enjoyed my time on
school placement. The factors above are just some of the many reasons
for this and I feel like this placement has given me the clarification I
needed as a first year student to see if teaching was for me. I have
gained invaluable knowledge from my lecturer, the students and the
teachers throughout this process which I will take with me into the future.

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Bibliography

Muijs.(2005). Effective Teaching: second edition.

Wubbel et al. (2014). Handbook of classroom management: Research, practice and
contemporary issues.
O'Connor. (2008). Teaching and Teacher education.