Job Training

You are really training on the job. The training you get at hire gets through a standard school day, but unfortunately, those are not that common. You have to be flexible to do this job, and you have to realize that well laid plans of the regular teacher rarely survive encounter with real children. Sometimes everything is easy as pie and goes according to teacher intentions, but often, the teacher is just glad the building did not burn down in their absence and that they did not lose students to horrific injuries by other students. You will learn far more in the classroom than you will in the training session. I am not saying the session is not useful, because it is. I just did not find that it covered all the things that will happen more often than what is actually covered, does.

The job training is difficult to rate. The problem is that they trained us for the optimal day in class, but not for what exists in the real world. Teachers often give faulty lesson plans, or have unruly classes with children who simply refuse to behave regardless of who is there, and you need to be able to handle those situations on the fly if you are to enjoy this position. It can be rewarding, but you are really doing your training (that part that is actually useful) on the job, not in the day or two of mandatory training at the start of the school year (or when you are hired if you are brought in mid-term).

It is repetitious. They should work toward getting you a degree in teaching.