NPQML - Training Event 1 - First Face-to-Face

NPQML - Training Event 1 - First Face-to-Face

Posted May 08 2019   Sarah Cook

Return to Candidate Blog
View all articles by Sarah Cook

0330 – Up.  Nervous.  Imposter Syndrome is a known thing.  I will be the only person there who doesn’t know how to teach.  Or lead.  Or what a child is. Had a cup of tea.

0600 – back from school with my lanyard, which I’d left there.  Genius.  Had a cup of tea because it’s colder than it looks out there!

0700 – Redid my folder (because that’s the only thing that matters, right?) and checked my stationery supplies.  Had a cup of tea because I’m like that.

0727 – leaving. Checked my bag so many times. Can’t work out what I’ve left behind, but I’m pretty sure it’s something.

0850 – here. Imposter syndrome in full effect. Everyone else is efficient. And youthful. Drinking tea.

1020 – Break.  Well.  This experience so far falls into two camps.  In the brilliant camp are the other people, the facilitator, the content, the resources, the room.  In the not-brilliant-camp is that I have been teaching almost as long as most of these lovely people have been alive.  Seriously.  When did I get to be the old teacher in the corner?  Interesting that BPN wants us to give an honest assessment of the resources and the course experience.  We have been honest – mostly positive, some less so, but mainly to do with broken links or doubling of resources. Tea and biscuits are good though.

1300 – Lunch.  Lunch was excellent.  Fair play to the canteen who provided an excellent buffet.  The morning has been challenging because it has made me think.  We’ve made mind maps of our projects, which has clarified what I want to do, although I was the only person who wanted to use big paper and pens and move to a clearer table.  It has really helped.  We then had to go through them and clarify what we had down, and that helped confirm my thoughts.  This has been wonderfully useful.  I have a meeting with my mentor tomorrow and I will be able to take this and show what we want to achieve clearly and concisely (on a big piece of paper!)

1530 – Worked through break, and finished early.  This is a good job as I’d done a lot of thinking and my brain was melting.  (We had tea whilst we worked.)

This day was a lot of our talking, and listening to each other, and working our way through why we want to do what we want to do.  It was less about being taught and more about finding our confidence.  I need to go through the notes again and see what I wrote down, clarify some bits.

I didn’t want to go today, I don’t really like meeting new people because I feel that I have nothing to offer.  This isn’t good leadership.  I will never be a good leader like this.  I suppose today has also made me face up to this.  If I want to lead, I have to be less socially awkward!