School as a “teacher” and a “student”

Report by Alec, Year 14

Over the course of this academic year, I have been both a student and a teacher. I am a Year 14 Chemistry student at MPW, and I am also working as a teaching assistant at St Philip’s School, a boys’ prep school nearby, and also my alma mater.

I’ve found that my days consist of generally the same routine. Typically my job requires me to supervise the children, while at the same time doing a lot of printing and laminating! My supervision duties extend across all the year groups, but I spend most of my time with the Year 5 and Year 6 boys. Usually I will have games on a Wednesday and a Friday where I will coach football, rugby or cricket. Meanwhile, Tuesdays consist of swimming and Thursdays are when we take the kids to the library.

I felt that my hard work at St Philip’s really paid off a couple of months ago. It turns out that one of the students at the school had nominated me for Teacher of the Week in The Week Junior magazine, and I managed to get it. To receive that kind of feedback was far and away the best moment during my time here. It calmed any residual nerves I had had about how well I’d been doing in this TA role.

Overall, I couldn’t have had a better experience teaching and would really recommend it to anybody who is interested in taking up a teaching assistant role. I have enjoyed my time working at St Philip’s more than anything else. Not only have I found the work incredibly rewarding, but I have been able to get a much greater insight into teaching itself. For the last two years it has been my plan to become a teacher and since year 8 I have wanted to take this position at St Philip’s during my gap year. This role has allowed me to confirm that teaching is a career that I certainly want to explore as I’m very interested in for my own future and confirms how much I enjoy this job.