Last essay and so on..

The last competence area is operational environment which means the networks around education and where the teacher is working. I picked as my essay topic Operational environments around practical training. My own vocational studies were that long ago that there weren't skills demonstrations as they are now, after the training period. But I was aware a little how things are done today since I've worked beside many young people doing their training during recent years. And basicly the training hasn't changed that much. Now it's done in shorter periods comparing to my times the training period was the whole summer. And we got paid for it. It wasn't that planned those days as it is now. The teacher didn't guide us so much, if I remember correctly my tutor-teacher wasn't visiting in my practice place, but then again, the farm that I was working had been guiding many practicants before me.

Once again writing an essay was a tough job. There was actually two weeks of time to complete the whole thing, which wasn't nearly enough of what I needed. Again, I felt lost with the subject, what's a good topic, where do i find the material and so on. It seems that reading the material takes way too much time. Like every time we've had an essay to write I was panicking that I'm not going to get through with this and I don't have a slightest clue about the subject until the last minute. And then it's already a little late to be able to write a good essay. But I wrote one, not a good one, but it's done. I think that I learn the things only after I've read also the essays of the others. For me it's impossible to learn something only by reading from books. When I read also the essays of my peer group members, there are so many aspects about the same subjects that I slowly start to understand the matter. And it was a good thing that we didn't have to make any presentation and we could comment on each others writings in Moodle. Reading other peoples comments and comparing them to my own opinions was very useful. It's different than when we comment on presentations in classroom. There is only the writing, not the presentation that you comment.

The last contact day is already past. It was very interesting to here about other students PTTs. And Rohit's RPL presentation from chemistry was interesting. Why wasn't my chemistry teacher like that in school.? And it was comfortable to here that also others have had the same problems during this education, although they have much more work experience than I have. Despite of different backgrounds we are all same kind.  

All in all I think I have reached my goals for this teacher education: To be competent enough to even try to apply a job around education.

Job hunting

There was a announcement for a position open in Koulutuskeskus Salpaus. They are looking for a person to be responsible for organising stable work in Jokimaa. The title would be Tallivastaava and this person will be responsible of all the practical things in the stables. There are about 40 horses and 3-5 persons working and guiding the students work. I send an application and got into interview. 41 applicants in total and they are interviewing 6 persons.

The interview situation was, well I didn't know that there are still interviews like this. four person sitting in front of me on the other side of the meeting room and questioning me for an hour! There were developing manager (also partly HR Person), some bigger boss from Päijät-Hämeen Koulutuskonserni (lady, who's name and title I forgot already), koulutusalapäällikkö and one teacher (she happens to be a friend of mine from Mustiala). The questions they asked:
- Why did you apply for this job?
- What do you think learning is?
- Do you have experience in working with young people?
-Do you have experience on being a boss? 
- What would you do if a student refuses to come to school?
- What do I think of schools horses?
- How will I manage a situation where five people are looking the same horse and saying different things how it should be taken care of?
- Can you fix things in the stable for example a flat wheel?
- Do you like to tell other people how to do their job?
- How would you market our new manege outside?
-Do you have a driving license and a permission to animal transport?
- What special competences do you have? for example shoeing a horse?
etc etc

Anyway the interview went well and thanks to studies in IPTE I could answer in all the questions. And I asked questions myself too: how are things managed in the stable, the timetables etc.   I don't have experience of being a boss or not that much of working with young students, I don't have a permission to animal transport, I don't have a license to drive a trailer but a small truck yes. But is there a person who has all these abilities? To be a professional horse person, a boss, salesman, capable of guiding students, a handy man and so on. One has to be a superhuman to get a job these days! So it depends if they appreciate more teacher studies and heavy experience in stable work and that I'm a team person or they will choose some handy man to fix stuff around and driving a truck and a trailer.  Not to mention that I have useful experience from abroad and I could guide also foreign students. Plus if there's a need I could be a substitute teacher also. Well we'll see how things go and if I don't get the job it's not the end of the world.

Special needs-course

One part of vocational teacher's work is to be able to recognise the special needs of each student. Special needs don't necessary mean handicap, it can be some other kind of difficulties in learning too. The amount of special needs students has increased a lot in last few years. So it's a must to be able to organise teaching in diverse ways so that every student has the possibility to learn and get the competence to work in his/her field. (by the way, I hate that I have to write his/her, it's clear that I mean what ever gender in general!) Anyway also for this course there was very little time and we only had a quick peek into the special needs education.

Education and society: operational environment

So I got passed from the education and society-course wuhuuu! Actually Education&society-course was a good base to learn about the operational environment in education, which is the theme for this autumn and the last area of competence I need to figure out. The next course was about networks in education. For this course we had a group assignment to create a map of networks where the teacher works and answer some questions about education in vocational institute. We chose to do one task which combined the map and the questions. We used Jari's work place Kanneljärven Opisto as an example and drew a map of the networks that Jari has in his work environment. We had an idea to create a new education program for Kanneljärven opisto. Doing this we answered the questions given in the task and it turned out to work pretty well. Now I know at least something about how the world of education works, where the money comes from and what other things there are going on besides teaching. The networks-course was important and a big issue, sad that there was so little time to discuss about it. Well actually for the first time in my life I had to watch the news and read about the government decisions and realise that they really have an impact in my life.

Now I have started to write the last essay. It will be something about using digital tools in practical training period and a little part about how the operational environment around practical training works.