At a recent meeting for student teachers, from Holy Child College of Education, to find out how they are getting on with their teaching practice in Fast-track Transformational Teacher Training (FTTT) schools, the student teachers expressed their views freely. We asked them about how they were progressing with this new way of teaching and learning for kindergarten and about their actual placement situation, e.g. where they are living. They shared that they are benefitting from the knowledge and skills gained by the programme and are generally feeling positive about their placements, but as expected they have encountered some challenges both inside and outside of the classroom.

The teaching-and-learning-related challenges experienced by some of them included lack of motivation and support from some parents, inability to carry out outside activities during the rainy season and very large class sizes. Placement challenges included shortage of electricity and/or water, noise and privacy issues. All of these issues were discussed during the meeting in order to reach a solution, and those that could not be resolved, will be discussed with head teachers during a head teacher forum coming up in May.

As well as challenges, student teachers told us about successes and the benefits they have gained as a result of the FTTT programme. These related to the transformative, educative aspects of the programme, which they said have set them apart from their peers in non-FTTT classrooms.

These were some of their comments:

  • The programme has broadened our knowledge in teaching, especially the 5 Cs (Confidence, Communication, Co-operation, Curiosity, Concentration)
  • The weekly overview has been a useful guide for teaching, as it sets out all of the classroom activities each day
  • We have learnt that children learn best through play
  • The use of phonics has helped us (student teachers) to improve in the use of the English language

At the end of the day, student teachers wrote letters to second year students in the college, to help the latter to understand what they will be experiencing next academic year when they join the FTTT programme.

Here is one of the letters a student teacher wrote:

student teacher letter

This meeting was much appreciated by all of the student teachers as it gave them a platform to share their challenges and find solutions. Everyone left the meeting excited to get back to their classrooms and put into practice all that had been discussed.