Reasons for Becoming a Teaching Assistant

Primarily I want to be a teaching assistant because I’m excited to support pupils learning and growth. I had some amazing teachers at school who really helped grow my confidence and encouraged me. I would like to make that same impact for others.

Yes, I do have some experience. I’ve had previous work experience at a primary school where I helped students with their reading in the morning, particularly I supported a group of children who were working at a lower level than their peers including some with autism. These children just needed a bit more one on one support and more encouragement.

I’m currently also tutoring in English with a group of Yr 7 kids. Helping them learn new vocabulary, reading a variety of texts with them and polishing up on their reading skills. For example, summarising, inferring etc. I can gauge what they’re struggling with by asking questions at the end of the session.

My biggest strength is that I’m a very collabrative person. I enjoy helping others and working with them. Recently, I had a colleague ask me for helped as she had a backlog of work. Did the work my supervisor asked me to do and then I helped her with her files. I enjoy that sense of community in a workplace, and being able to foster a positive environment at work.

I tend to take negative feedback to heart. I remember once when I was relatively new at my current role, i made a mistake at work as I was still getting used to this new software. At the time, I felt really bad and was overthinking ym mistake after my boss spoke to me about it. But i’ve learnt with time to view mistakes as an inevitable part of learning and I’ve learnt to not dwell on any negative feedback. Instead, take accountability, rectify your mistake and not to make that mistake again. Reframing this in my mind has helped me out a lot because I don’t view mistakes as a hindrance anymore, but an opportunity for growth.

Democracy - where suitable in the cirriculum, pupils should learn about democracy, the negatives, the positives. Comparing the way the UK government works compare to other countries. Actively demonstrate this by having pupils vote on who should be their student representative.

Tolerance - important to always encourage learning about other faiths as well as your own. Tolerance is the backbone of the UK, where we live in a multicultural society.

I believe that our role is to help create well rounded, independent and confident individuals and a key part of that is extra cirricular. I was attracted to this school because of that emphasis on extra cirricular as well as the univeristy entrance rate which is pretty good and ofcourse the oftsted report rating it ‘good’.

What attracted me to this school was really the amount of extracirricular activities that students could take part in from debating to drama, chess. I believe there’s also a rowing club and they get the opportunity to represent their school internationally with trips to France, Russia and so on. I think that’s quite impressive considering that our goal is to create well rounded individuals. Extravirriculats play a big part in increasing confidence, encouraging independence and preparing you for your future.

Academically speaking the school was rated good by ofsted and there’s a high university entrance rate.