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About Student Minds

Thu 4 July 2024 - 10:34

By Student Minds in Support

Starting university can be a wonderful and exciting experience, but it can also bring its own unique challenges. It's natural to feel nervous or overwhelmed during the first few weeks at university, and it can be a while before you feel like you’ve found your feet. Student Minds works to transform the state of student mental health so that all in higher education can thrive, including you!
 
 
Student Minds is the UK’s student mental health charity. We empower students and members of the university community to develop the knowledge, confidence and skills to look after their own mental health, support others and create change. We train students and staff in universities across the UK to deliver student-led peer support interventions as well as research-driven campaigns and workshops. By working collaboratively across various sectors, we share best practice and ensure that the student voice...

Ten essentials you don't realise you need to bring to uni

Wed 17 July 2024 - 15:39

By UCAS in First year

There are some things you obviously need to take to uni – like clothes, shoes, and bedding – but here are ten things that might not seem so important, but, from experience, are essential.

Posters, pictures, and wall hangings
It might not seem like much of an 'essential', but trust me, it is. When you move into your room and look at the stacks of boxes and blank white walls, it's easy to get homesick. You don't want to feel like you're living in a hotel room for a year. Take posters and things to put on your walls. It's also a very good idea to take pictures of you with your friends and family, as most halls will have a corkboard where you can pin them up.

Wok
Take a good wok with you. This is a durable piece of kit that's great for a multitude of one-pot meals, perfect for cooking for one person, batch cooking, and all those endless stir fry meals you'll be making.

Dressing gown
The humble dressing gown. Hidden in its soft,...

Five ways to ensure a successful ITT year - Tracey Lawrence

Tue 6 November 2018 - 16:07

By Tracey Lawrence in Teacher Training

Congratulations! You are about to embark on the best career and this year will, without a doubt, be your most challenging and most rewarding year professionally. To ensure a successful Initial Teacher Training (ITT) year you need to make sure that you are fully focused on developing the craft of teaching. To be where you are right now you will no doubt have an innate way with children but to learn the ever-changing skill of teaching, you need to be fully committed to continual professional development throughout the rest of your teaching career.

Behaviour Management is a skill that underpins great teaching. Without successful behaviour management in your class, you cannot have a learning atmosphere, you cannot deliver that incredible lesson that you have planned and you cannot achieve the outcomes nor the progress that you need to. Not only is it in the best interests of the children to get this part right but it is most definitely in the best interests of yourself to...

Feeling homesick at university

Thu 20 June 2024 - 10:12

By Ellen Ramsay in Support


by Ellen Ramsay, BSc (Hons) Occupational Therapy, Teesside University

University has been the best three years of my life so far but, at first, it didn’t feel like that way.

I was really excited about my new adventure – I was moving 200 miles north to begin my university course in occupational therapy. But the homesickness set in during Freshers’ Week. I found my new life very difficult – I had arrived with freshers’ flu (yes, it does exist!) and I cried all the time. I can remember saying to my family that, if I wasn’t feeling better within four weeks, I was coming home. But I stuck with it and it got better and, three years down the line, I graduated.

Feeling homesick is a normal part of starting university, especially when you’ve travelled a long way from home. Suddenly everything around you is different – a new place, people, accents, culture, language, course, combined with the pressure to get out there.

But if, like me,...

Top ten student money tips

Thu 25 July 2024 - 11:33

By money.co.uk in Money

Getting a degree is expensive, but making every penny count lets you squeeze every drop of fun from your uni days without getting saddled with debt. Here are the top ten essential money tips for students.

1. Work out a budget
It is hard to set a precise weekly budget before you get to university and see what things really cost. However, trying to work out an outline budget before you go is still a good idea – even a rough idea of how much money you will have available each week will help you to avoid blowing your budget early.

The simplest way to do this is to make one list of all your monthly income (e.g. from loans, part-time work, the Bank of Mum and Dad) and another listing all the expenses you can think of.

Remember, the more accurate you can be when predicting expenses, the clearer the picture of your money situation will be – include everything from rent, bills and food, to things like books, library fees, transport costs and laundry. Once...

My teacher training experience: part 2 – Stephen Pearce

Tue 6 November 2018 - 15:54

By Stephen Pearce in Teacher Training

 
This is the second my blog where I’ve been reflecting on my experiences of initial teacher training. You can read part one here. But now, I’m going to look at some of the questions trainee teachers frequently ask themselves:
 

1. Is my subject knowledge good enough?
I am going to probably upset a few people but the answer is no, your subject knowledge is not good enough. Before you grab your pitchforks let me explain. You may be an expert in your subject and have a degree to prove it, however, teaching a subject is vastly different to being able to do it yourself. To really exaggerate this point, let's take 2 + 2. This would be mathematics most of us would have seen at a very young age and now you can tell me that the answer is four. You have...

My teacher training experience: part 1 – Stephen Pearce

Thu 21 March 2019 - 16:36

By Stephen Pearce in Teacher Training

As the end of the PGCE course seems in sight, I have taken the opportunity to reflect on my experiences. If you are reading this you are probably at the same stage of your career or where I was last year, considering if this is what I want to do. If you are in the latter, please just do it, I won’t say you won’t have moments that you regret that decision but on the whole you will love it.
 
I am going to start off with one of the best things about the course. I started teacher training successively from an undergraduate course and your new classmates will seem very different. Mainly, you will notice the range in ages. This diversity means that your new classmates will have a variety of professional experience that you can learn from.
 
Honestly though, the other people on the course will be great for support and for letting off steam but your main asset on the course will...

From teaching assistant to qualified teacher - Tom Savagar

Tue 10 September 2019 - 15:25

By Tom Savagar in Teacher Training

As I come to the end of my teacher training, I’ve taken the opportunity to reflect on my experience of moving from being a teaching assistant (TA) to becoming a qualified teacher. As this is a transition which many teachers have made, I thought that I would share some helpful things to bear in mind when making the jump. As a TA, you’ve already shown that you can offer a great deal to the children you work with, so with the right support, there’s no reason you can’t become a fantastic teacher.
 
A new role
 
As a TA, you get a daily look at how teachers work. This means that you’re uniquely positioned to learn more about the path you’re about to embark on. The role of a teacher differs from that of a TA, and it’s worth taking this opportunity to speak to the teachers in your school, or any friends or relatives you have who are teachers, about how. 
...

Changing lives and getting paid for it – Pranav Patel

Mon 4 October 2021 - 15:43

By Pranav Patel in Teacher Training

 

I want to share with you my journey into teaching. An honest version of this journey because in this career you will face different challenges to any other career you undertake. Never doubt however that this is the best undertaking you will ever have.

My name’s Pran and I’m currently a Lead Practitioner in an inner London academy. The son of two immigrant parents, one from the West Indian state of Gujrat and the other hailing from the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

After graduating from the University of Birmingham with a Bachelor of Science in Physics, I flittered from a variety of career options until, by chance, I ended up supporting in a secondary school for a day. At this point for me it clicked. I’m changing lives and getting paid for it, does it get any better than this?

Born in a typically British Asian household I was always pushed to excel; be successful in every aspect of my life from academia to career. The...

Getting behaviour right from the start – Tom Bennett

Thu 25 July 2024 - 09:26

By Tom Bennett in Teacher Training

Anyone who wants to be a teacher should know this: getting behaviour right from the start is one of the most important things you can do. If you hope they'll behave, good luck. Maybe they will. Maybe some will. And maybe they won't and you'll need to know what to do. In-school training can be patchy. If you're lucky you'll find a school that knows how to train you in the craft of classroom management. Or maybe you won't; maybe your training schools will be civil and ordered and you won't see what it is that makes that happen.

I investigated behaviour training in 2015 for the Department for Education, and in 2016 we published our guidelines about what a new teacher should know in order to be 'classroom ready'. Running a room isn't a small part of our jobs - it's an essential component. Without good behaviour,...

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