While incredibly rewarding, your teacher training year can also be demanding and challenging at times. And so, from your very first day, we maintain a focus on teacher training wellbeing and support to ensure that you have a fantastic experience on the programme.
Helping children and young people to progress and reach their full potential in life is an amazing gift; we therefore see it as our responsibility to ensure that our trainee teachers are protected, supported and take care of themselves on this incredibly selfless journey.
We’re dedicated to the welfare of our trainees.
The teacher training year is an immensely busy one, therefore looking after ourselves is key to avoiding burnout and ensuring that we give our best to our pupils!
All of the wellbeing support that you receive during your teacher training year is based on the ‘5 Ways to Wellbeing’.
We help you to practice and embed evidence-informed methods and strategies (such as mindfulness, resilience building, emotional self-assessment, and identifying personal early warning signs of emotional overload) to not only improve wellbeing in the workplace but also in your daily lives.
Wellbeing is a key feature of trainee 1:1 check-ins with their tutor, in which they’re asked to reflect on how they’re doing emotionally and mentally and share the challenges they face. Trainee welfare is also an important agenda item when your tutor meets with in-school Teacher Training Leads.
If trainee teachers feel their state of wellbeing is not balanced, the tutor and trainee work collaboratively to create actions that the trainee can take to mitigate the issues raised. These actions form a Wellbeing Plan, which the trainee and tutor discuss fortnightly to reflect on the trainee’s progress.
We have a dedicated Wellbeing Curriculum strand that begins with a wellbeing session on your very first day of Summer School and life as a teacher trainee. We recognise that wellbeing and personal organisation are linked, and so our curriculum supports trainees with their organisation over the course of the training year.
The curriculum further provides practical strategies that trainee teachers can use to support their own wellbeing and develop positive personal organisation habits. A focused curriculum booklet is also provided, which trainees use throughout their year to complete tasks and guide their practice. We have streamlined this to support trainee workload, and share upcoming tasks and deadlines to allow you to organise and manage your time in advance.
To support trainee teacher wellbeing, tutors work together with in-school Teacher Training Leads to design teaching timetables that reflect the progress of the individual trainee. Your teaching load will gradually increase over the course of the year as you become more confident leading lessons.
At the beginning of the training year, a Wellbeing Representative is assigned to each training group. The Wellbeing Representative is responsible for organising social events for the training group so that you can bond with other trainee teachers over shared experiences, forming a supportive network of teachers across schools. Trainees on our course find that these social interactions and shared teaching experiences help them stay more connected with their peers.
Every half term, a Wellbeing Newsletter will be sent out to all trainee teachers. This newsletter includes top tips for wellbeing linked to the ‘5 Ways to Wellbeing,’ shoutouts to trainee teachers and good news stories to celebrate.
Managing Classrooms and BehaviourWe don’t expect you to manage everything on your own; classroom and behaviour management is a collective, school-wide responsibility that continues even after you’ve become a fully qualified teacher. |
Learning How To Connect With Your PupilsWe teach communication techniques that will help you to form great relationships with your students so that they understand your instructions and feel that they’re able to progress in your lessons and make mistakes. |
Developing Your Classroom AuthorityWe practice teaching techniques that trainees are encouraged to use in and out of lessons so that authority in the classroom becomes second nature and debunk the myth that some people have a natural teaching authority. |
At AET, we advocate for diversity and inclusion in teacher training to make a positive difference to the lives of our pupils. And we want to do even more to promote diversity throughout the organisation.
Roughly 37% of AET students are eligible for the Pupil Premium Grant compared to 24% nationally, and about 33% are from ethnic minority backgrounds which is comparable with 33% nationally.
As of November 2020, 19% of teachers in AET schools described themselves as being in a minority ethnic group, compared with the national average of 15%.
