I physically couldn’t carry everything I was given at the training back from Canterbury so my sister had to come and meet me, empty suitcase in hand. She was unimpressed and is becoming more unimpressed as she watches the suitcase she dragged all the way home has remain unopened in the hall.

At the closing ceremony of the Summer Institute Canterbury Christ Church University’s Dean of Education told us that, despite all indications to the contrary, Teach First offered the most support to its student teachers. Tutors, mentors, resources. This would all be well and good if I wasn’t terrified to open the suitcase containing a good portion of said support. I’m even hesitant to check my emails. Do I really want to know what text I’m teaching my AS level class? Or what is planned for year seven? All this leads to something more daunting than planning - practice.

I will have five classes of pupils, and seventeen hours of lesson time, during which I will be solely responsible for their development in English literature. I can’t lie: it’s a little difficult to breathe when I remember that the next time I teach (which will be my fifth lesson as a teacher to date) I will be totally alone.

However they say that the first thing to master is behaviour, without basic behaviour management I can’t really expect my year tens to take in any Shakespeare. My tutor said to set simple rules and expectations and spend the whole first lesson on them, maybe even revise them at the beginning of your first few lessons. This not only establishes your status as authoritative and not to be messed with (I hope) but means that I can plan one first lesson for all my different classes – where’s the down side? Recommendations for the rules are that they be concise and alliterative. For example: be polite, be punctual and be prepared. It’s debatable whether or not this will lead them to be any of those things, but at least they know what's coming is a detention if they are not.

So it’s all about thinking in baby steps. Behaviour is step one, and it may be one of the most difficult aspects but it sounds a lot less daunting on it’s own. Maybe I’ll spend my first day of planning just thinking about behaviour, then I’ll think about all the content I have to cover and make engaging, not to mention differentiate across varying abilities. Yeah, I’ll think about that later.

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