Scenario 2: Peter

Peter had always wanted to be a teacher although his first career took him on a different pathway. While experiencing considerable success in that career, Peter decided that the time was right to him to make the career move to teaching. Peter was very excited to be doing his first professional experience at a local ‘leafy green’ school.  His initial reaction to the school was that it had “good students, good culture between colleagues, strong student leadership program and good behavioural expectations”.    He was allocated a very supportive and welcoming supervising teacher (Judy) who “made a place for me to sit, assist her in teaching, and marking the papers. I was treated as if I were a member of the teaching team”. While Peter was given “regular, constructive and positive feedback” from his host teacher, he was having difficulty in accepting the feedback. Further, while Peter enjoyed interacting with the students and teachers he was shocked by intensity of the workload, “how tiring it can be”, and hadn’t realised “the amount of work required outside 8-4 other than marking”.