I am still awaiting the confirmation of my PVG, and with the weeks going by quickly, this isn’t ideal.  However, as mentioned previously, the flexible nature of my placement with Active Stirling means there is still plenty of oppourtunities to gain the required hours.

The apprehension of getting going is growing the more I have to wait.  Although the overriding emotion is still excitement, with this chance to work with many different groups of young people, doing my best to help both them and the people running the events I will be attending.  I have been revising through previous sessions I did when getting my coaching qualification in preparation for when everything is in place.  Again, this only contributes to the excitement and slight nervousness I’m feeling in regards to coaching young people for the first time.

I’ve been in contact with Craig regarding the PVG, this process is well on it’s way to being complete.  Hoping again to finally get going by the time I post my next blog.  Apologies for the delay and repetetive nature of my blogs so far!

Tom

This should be Week 3 of my placement at Raploch Primary School however, the school was closed for the October holidays. Therefore, I have decided to write about another session that I assisted during week 2. This session was directed towards primary 1-2 children were an external football coach named Hamish came into the school to lead a football session. My role during this session was to support Hamish by setting up drills while managing children’s behavior.

Firstly, we started off with a warm-up playing disco tig. Once the children were warmed up, we then decided to go into a shooting drill which all of the children seemed to love! Myself and Hamish split the children into two teams e.g. a red team and a blue team. Both teams stood in a straight line behind their cone facing the goals. The kids were expected to run out to a cone that was placed to their right or left – touch it with their hand and run straight back to their starting cone. Once they got back to the starting cone, both groups were expected to race for the ball which was situated in the middle of the court and try to score into one of the two bottom corners. My first thought was this is going to be challenging as I felt that the kids would lose concentration however, I was wrong!! It ran pretty smoothly.

After we added some additional parts to the shooting drill, we progressed into a game that was very entertaining. Due to the children being so young they were either all running for the ball at the one time or they couldn’t work out which way to shoot. Hamish decided to stop the game at one point and explained why we need to spread out as well as informing each team which way they were supposed to be shooting, as some of the participants were trying to shoot into their own goal. Once he explained to the kids which way they were supposed to be shooting the game flowed a lot better.

Overall, assisting a session with younger participants has shown how challenging it can be to not only manage children’s behavior but plan sessions that are within their capabilities. This session has shown me that all kids learn differently, some have better concentration spans than others and that all children are at different levels in terms of ability.

I am still currently waiting to hear if my PVG has been updated. It is nearly 2 weeks since this was sent away and my mentor Craig said that this is round about how long it should take. Fingers crossed I hear back soon regarding my PVG being updated. With it now being week 6 in the semester I am starting to get stressed about making up my 30 hours. But I’m sure once I get started I wont be long in clocking in hours.

Craig has been really good with keeping in touch and has been emailing about possible opportunities. One of the opportunities is next Wednesday at the Peak helping at a Parasport Festival. This is being run by Scottish Disability Sport and Active Stirling. I am looking forward to finally getting started my placement and being able to work alongside other coaches and other students.

I also received an email from Craig about another event which is on the 8th of November at the Peak and the event is a Boccia festival. This event interests me as I have heard all about boccia but I’ve never actually seen it being played. But I’m unsure if Im able to make this event as I have my mid-semester meeting.

I cant wait to finally get started and make up my 30 hours!

Chloe

Unfortunately I still haven’t received my PVG confirmation through mail yet however my mentor Craig told us that they may go straight to Active Stirling before we get sent one which eases my anxiety a little. I have been in contact with my mentor a lot through email and I’m awaiting an email back to see what is going to happen as I previously have had a few PVG’s through my work and refereeing which means they would usually be sent out quicker.

I am due to start my placement on Wednesday the 23rd October which I feel very excited about. This will be a Central Parasport Festival which will take place at The Peak. This event will run from 9am until 3pm and is organised by Scottish Disability Sport and Active Stirling.  I am looking forward to this event and I don’t feel very anxious at all. I can’t wait to work along side the other students at this event as this will be our 1st placement together.

We were also offered to help out at another event on the 8th November from 9am-1pm which is also taking place at The Peak and ran by the same organisations however this time the event is called Stirling Boccia Festival. I have been in contact with Craig to tell him that I have a meeting that morning in university however depending on what time I will go after the meeting if that is allowed.

My mentor has been in touch a lot with us through emails with upcoming events and if we have any questions we need to ask him he is very good at answering back within a few days, I feel very confident about emailing and talking to my mentor which has helped a lot so far.

I am feeling very confident about my upcoming placements, however I am feeling very anxious about not making my hours but I keep trying to stay positive as I know that others in my class are in the same position as me.

 

Unfortunately I haven’t started placement yet, which I feel a bit disappointed as most of the class already has. I’m not letting it get to me though as I can’t help it, as I need a protection vulnerable groups (PVG) membership as I am going to be working with children once on placement. Hopefully should receive it soon as I have previously had one with other work and it tends to be come through quicker if you are existing member.

Even if the PVG came through earlier this week I wouldn’t of been able to start my placement this week as the schools in Edinburgh are of on October break from Monday 14/10/19 to Wednesday 23/10/19. So I am hoping it  will come through before they start back so can get some few hours next week or more since we are off for reading week.

I am stressing a little about getting my hours done but  not going to stress about getting my hours completed  to much as I should have the PVG through by next week. Hopefully get even a couple  hours done next week. Then the following week  I should able to do more the just a few hours,  as I discussed with my mentor I can do a full day on Monday at one of the schools, as I can shadow the coach at one of them, then a few hours through the other days I should manage to get my hours up no problem.

Although I have been a little stressed waiting and still am, I am also excited for when I do start placement as I get to work at couple different school active schools work along with and a variety of sports too.

By Holly Sheil

 

Although we are almost at reading week I still have not yet started my placement, this is due to the school I am going to also having a student in on placement meaning I am having to wait until her placement has finished for me to be able to start. I will thankfully be starting placement next week and I am excited to get in and started.

I will be doing my placement at Smithycroft high school. I found my own placement as the principle PE teacher at this school is my old high school teacher. I always had a great relationship with my mentor while at school and continued this after leaving high school, we always stayed in contact and regularly email back and forth.

When I emailed to ask my mentor is she had space to fit me in to do my work experience there she was excited and couldn’t wait to get started as well. We met up to discuss what days worked best for the both of us and to work out a time table for when I start. For my first lesson during period one I will be teaching gymnastics, period two and three I will be teaching badminton, period four I will be teaching fitness, I am off period 5 and period 6 I will be teaching basketball. I feel very comfortable teaching gymnastics and fitness but I am excited to observe basketball and badminton and learn more about teaching these activity’s for when I start my placement after Christmas.

Emailing has worked well between my mentor and myself, my mentor hasn’t been fast replying which has been great as it means if I have had any questions they have been answered quickly. My mentor has also let me know what teachers classes I will be in, this has also made me more at ease as I know exactly what I am going in to do and who with meaning I can be prepared from the start.

Over all I can’t wait to get in and started on my work experience is Smithycroft high school.

 

Paige

Christina

Feeling so much better this week for placement thankfully.  I was helping out at the primary school cricket session again this week.  I found the session particularly challenging.  The pupils that attend this session seem to have a real lack of respect for the coach.  Always messing around and not listening or paying attention to instructions given by the coach.  I felt myself having to bite my tongue not to raise my voice to get them to actually sit and listen.  However I didn’t really feel it was my place to do so.  It was Tony’s session and I didn’t want to over step my mark as it were.  When  he finally managed to get them sorted into their groups to practice their catching skills I did raise my voice to the 3 groups I was working with as they were just launching the balls around the gym and throwing themselves on the mats.  It did appear to have an impact as they stopped messing about and actually started doing the task that they were meant to be doing.  Although not for very long before they started messing around again.  I could feel myself getting increasingly annoyed at certain pupils.  However I just took a deep breath and put this aside and encouraged them and gave advice to them when they were doing the different tasks.  I was actually quite thankful when the session ended.  As it was very manic.  It did think a couple of times,  “this is why I don’t teach children”.
The Floorball session up at the high school was far more relaxed.  There were fewer pupils there this week so they only had 2 teams and the played 15 minute halfs.  They pupils there are very focused and eager to play.  It was a good opportunity for me to watch them play as a team and individually. Tony also let me see the skill session plans that he intends to use after the holidays.  They look good and I hope to maybe get along to 1 of the sessions but I have had to miss a couple of weeks of my Sporting Excellence lectures in order to attend these sessions so I plan after the reading week to go back to the Fridays as I don’t want to miss anymore than I already have.

Week 2 – work experience

Similar to last week I have spent this week waiting for my PVG form to be returned so I am able to start my work experience.

We had a class on Friday last week which gave us an insight into how we should look to plan forward when thinking about our careers. This involved us looking back on what we thought were our greatest achievements to date and then planning in stages of one year, three years and five years and thinking what we want to have achieved by those landmarks. My goals for these landmarks were in one year to have my degree, in three years to be living in Australia and in five years be working in a job that is related to my studies. I found this quite hard because I am definitely guilty of being short cited when thinking of my career and definitely spend more time thinking about playing sport and studying than I do about future work. My take from this seminar is that I should start using this tool to look ahead and set myself some goals to aim for and look to do the same thing periodically to see how I am doing or adjust the goals if they become unrealistic.

In the later part of last week, I received an email from Craig my adviser offering a volunteering opportunity to be an event assistant at the central para-sport festival. I have replied saying that I am available to help at this event but did so just before the weekend so am still waiting to hear back from Craig but I am hopeful that I will get to go along to help and see what it is like to work in a sports festival. So i am hopeful to hear back next week.

So this week I met up with the team organizing the fright night fun run at the end of the month. The meeting was based around a progress check from the original group.  We are at a stage where we are looking for places to promote flyers and promote the event through classes. We are looking to approach clubs and societies who are part of the student union. We aiming to have the event based around students and look for most of the participants to be students. I am going to talk to the social secretary for rugby and get the team involved as they are a large team that can bring numbers. We also discussed the roles the team would have when the event is running. There will be a team that will be taking over social media, a team that will be organizing race numbers, a team tracking race times and a team of scarers.

We are also planning to have a stall in the INTU building to get interested in an international student level and have them be involved.  There will be a rota posted for when people will have allocated time on the stall.

I am looking forward to the next meeting see how people are making progress.