Spring Insight Participant Review

I had a fantastic time. Getting to know the other participants, learning about their experiences in the education system and making new friends would have made the fortnight worthwhile even without the pay and the experience. I also loved spending time in my host school and teaching my own class.

There were a lot of participants from all over the country, so it was easy to go unnoticed if you wanted to during the first week of seminars and talks. During the second week, once we had been scattered to various schools throughout the country into much smaller groups, we were really made to feel welcome and appreciated by our host school.

The support from peers was excellent throughout. During the first week, one on one guidance was not really an option because there were so many of us, but it wasn't really necessary because the task was usually pretty clear. During the second week, the support from the school was superb.

As I'm still studying, there hasn't been much opportunity to use any of the behavioral management skills or lessons planning skills that I learned on the insight program. However, the workshops and seminars in the first week did help massively when it came to teaching my class, and next time I teach, I will remember what I learned.

It was all very slick. Accommodation and transport were all sorted. Each day was jam-packed which got pretty exhausting but it was also satisfying. My school was particularly well organized, so our timetable was full of lesson observations and time to prepare our own lessons. One downside of doing the spring insight is that it seems to coincide with mock exams so many of the classes were just revision lessons.

It was extremely sociable and supportive. There was definitely a sense of comradery amongst the participants, partly because we were all so tired by the end of each day, but also because almost everyone bought into the Teach First vision and believed that they were doing something good with a worthwhile organization.

Teach First provided a lot of content and a lot of activities to help practice which tended to be peer assessed. One-on-one training and feedback was scarce save for the feedback I was given by the leadership in my school after I had taught my class.

The insight definitely helped me understand more about what it's like to work in a school (hectic) and the Teach First leadership development program is structured. The most valuable thing was actually having the opportunity to spend time in a school environment for a week. It was also helpful to hear from people who had completed the program and gone on to teach further or to do something else.

Teach First are very clear about there vision to end educational inequality but they also understand that graduates who do the leadership development program may want to try something else for a while.

Getting hands-on experience was invaluable in helping me decide whether teaching will be for me. It

All transport was either provided or reimbursed and all accommodation was provided. The accommodation for the first week was very nice, albeit a little far from the conference center. That didn't matter much since our tube tickets were paid for. During the second week, I was in a Travelodge. This would have been absolutely fine except that there were no cooking facilities which made eating expensive. It was nice to have a roommate.

We were all signed up to the only Teach First community which gave us an online platform on which to network if we so wished.

Someone came in from Shell to talk about her route into business via Teach First. I didn't think she was that good. Her talk seemed to focus on the fact that she looked very young and was ethnically ambiguous. It was interesting to hear about the challenges that afforded her but there I would have preferred to hear about her job and why she did it and how Teach First came into all of that. Perhaps it just didn't resonate with me because I'm a white male.

A trip to the pub was suggested, but I didn't go.

I would. It's well paid, well structured, and a good experience.