This trainee placement compared to the previous two

This trainee placement is very different to the previous two in several aspects. To begin with, I am doing it full time, whereas the previous two were part time. That means that before I spent three whole days at school and another two days at work every week, and I extended the duration of the school placement to complete the foreseen hours. That worked out wonderfully for me, because the three days when I went to school I had several hours after we finished at 16.30 to continue working on things related to the school placement, such as writing my diary, or preparing activities and lessons. I have to say that my second trainee placement felt way too long, especially because the university didn't allow me to start early in order to finish together with the rest of my classmates, which forced me to continue with the trainee placement until the end of june, way after our exams had finished and everybody else was enjoying their holidays. That took me to decide that it would have to be full time this time. Of course, that means that I hardly have time out of the school hours to work on my placement, which I hate, because I have to work at the same time.

Another big difference is that my previous two experiences were as a "regular" teacher trainee, and this time I am getting to see the life of the "specialist" teacher. So, before, I spent the whole day with the same group of children, and now I change every half an hour or 45 minutes. That is a considerable difference, and it is important to see if you feel comfortable with so much change. I must say that both have advantages and disadvantages, and I would be happy to try any of them as a teacher in the future.

My previous two placements were in the same school, with the same teacher and the same group of children. The pre-primary unit where I was placed was much smaller than my current school in the third placement, which is also a big difference. This larger school has more space, especially for storing and for teachers to work in, which is nice.

Finally, before I only had contact with pre-primary children, and this time I have English lessons with children aged four and five in pre-primary, and children aged six, seven and nine in primary, which is also very different.

So, altogether I think I will get a quite global view on teaching in pre-primary and primary, which is great.