Before taking up my internship with Phoenix, I never got the opportunity to teach. As a Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) gaining teaching experience on my placement in a private school in Italy was a highly rewarding experience. However there were also potential pitfalls to teaching at this very early stage of my career. Pushed into the deep end I had to learn to swim quickly.
Teaching is as much about the preparation as the delivery, so I learnt the hard way as I did not plan the first session carefully and felt very much out of my depth. However, I learnt never to make those mistakes again. I learnt the importance of locating sessions in a wider context, as well as looking at how the lessons fitted into the rest of the module and linked how students were assessed on this material and indeed covering the key points during the course of the session. That was only one part of the experience as I now have a lot of Italian friends and can actually speak the language.
Phoenix Social Enterprise 