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algy
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Re: Watch this space
Thanks for that. I've read a bit of Lodge; genius!
I do intend to the MA route once I'm working. We're about to move so I needed to get something a bit more immediate to start with. The woman who heads up the PGCE suggested that the college might pay for my MA once I get my feet under the table.
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8/11/2008, 7:27 pm
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Edge44
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Re: Watch this space
If you can get permanent teaching hours at the Institute, you should get your MA paid for. Getting permanent hours is the tricky bit, though; it depends on what your specialist area of teaching will be... any ideas?
I'm doing it the other way around to you: I'm doing my MA and taching at the Institute, and when I get more hours they'll hopefully pay for my PGCE.
I've been a casual lecturer at the Institute for a year now, and have only managed two teaching hours a month so far (and that's only because Chris Dows asked me to put a short course together for a Writers Group). I've heard positive rumblings for more permanent hours from September, but to be honest I'm not holding my breath.
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8/13/2008, 10:42 pm
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algy
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Re: Watch this space
Yeah i'm hoping that by doing the Pre-Service PGCE I'm already gonna have my feet at least part-way under the table when it comes to looking for paid work. If I can't get it at the Institute than there's other options such as sixth form and even schools. Apparently two of this year's PGCE grads have got jobs in schools and simply have to do some kind of conversion course during their first year.
I was told in my interview that the college would pay for my Masters, which means I'll be looking for one pretty soon; I take it you would recomend yours? Is it at Hallam?
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8/14/2008, 8:13 am
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Edge44
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Re: Watch this space
I would definitely recommend the MA Writing at Sheffield Hallam, although I don't know how good it is in comparison to other writing MAs. Other students have told me that the course is regarded as one of the top post-graduate writing courses in the country, but how near the top it is I don't know.
Here's a link to the course page:
http://prospectus.shu.ac.uk/op_pglookup1.cfm?id_num=137
Theres a good MA at Manchester and of course there's the extraordinarilly popular MA at the UEA, but I chose Sheffield because I didn't want to travel far. The other thing that attracted me to the MA Writing was that it is run on only one day a week (Wednesday), regardless of whether you study full-time or part-time.
I highly recommend the course simply for the advice you get from the lecturers, who are all published writers in their field of teaching.
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8/14/2008, 9:31 am
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algy
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Re: Watch this space
Okay, thanks. I suppose if the Institute pays they may want a say in where I go. My brother works at Leeds Uni and he says their post grad stuff is good; but then he would I suppose.
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8/14/2008, 9:46 am
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Edge44
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I think the important thing for you to consider when embarking on an MA is to ensure the lecturers are all published writers in their field of teaching - this is where the quality of the course comes from. The MA Writing at Sheffield would be a lesser course with lecturers who were not successful in their fields.
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8/14/2008, 9:50 am
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algy
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Yes, I think that's why I'm gonna avoid Chris's MA; no point going over the same ground with the same unpublished teachers.
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8/14/2008, 10:51 am
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Edge44
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Re: Watch this space
In that case, you didn't take advice from me 
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8/14/2008, 11:43 am
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algy
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I'm gonna have to grovel because I had agreed to do it. The course leader of the PGCE said she wouldn't accept me if I were doing a Masters at the same time because she didn't think I would do her course justice. Fair enough I suppose but I had to turn Chris down and in the time since I've had chance to have a think; and that thought is 'no'. So don't worry, I'd already decided against it.
As for specialising I'm not really aiming for anything too specific because I want to get as many hours as I can. Basically I'll start out with English and Media and then whore myself to whoever wnats me. How hard can A Level Maths be
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8/14/2008, 5:25 pm
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Fitzgerald Fortune
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quote:
algy wrote:
unpublished teachers.
Excuse me
In all seriousness, I don't think the college is prepared to deliver Master's level programmes, precisely because it doesn't understand the importance of supporting its academic staff: the support mechanisms are not in place to give staff the time to conduct research and publish material.
A few months ago, my line manager sent out an email asking for a list of people's research interests. I sent her an email back containing a fairly extensive list of bits and bobs that I've had published, including some of the fiction that I had published when I was a student and the critical work that I've had published, alongside some of the conference papers/external lectures I've given at film festivals and such. She responded by saying that she didn't know I had done that much work. My response was to declare that she'd never expressed an interest in my research and publications and that as the college had never offered me support (either in terms of sabbaticals or simply in terms of helping me find data or make contacts) in conducting research or getting work published, I didn't want the college getting the prestige for work that it had never declared an interest in and which I had conducted under my own steam and without any support from my employers whatsoever. If I interview, say, Phil Tippett, Mark Helfrich or Michael Douglas, it's unsupported by the college and is solely down to my own hard work: it's unfair of the college to try to use that to bolster its own reputation.
Of course, the trick the college pulls is to use that information as leverage to get new courses validated. They're only interested in your publications and research work when it suits them. For example, when I first started working there (in 2001) I was the only person within the department who had a Master's-level degree. Consequently, our then-management stuck my name and CV under most of the core modules on the degree programmes, in order to get them validated and add some prestige to the validation documents (they were entirely upfront about their reasons for doing this), and when the courses were validated they gave the modules to other people to deliver.
Frankly, the institution doesn't currently have the resources, support or the understanding of postgraduate-level provision to deliver those Master's-level programmes. The staff will do what they can to make sure those programmes are delivered well, but the ethos has to exist within the management strata. My experiences of writing those two Master's-level programmes tells me that management don't have a clue how to go about delivering postgraduate degrees: they're approaching them like NVQs or National Diplomas. (I also think the college needs to get the undergraduate provision right before it even thinks about delivering postgraduate degrees: some of the undergraduate degrees are barely above 'A' level in terms of their content.)
quote:
As for specialising I'm not really aiming for anything too specific because I want to get as many hours as I can. Basically I'll start out with English and Media and then whore myself to whoever wnats me. How hard can A Level Maths be
When I did my PGCE (eight years ago now), you had to teach within your own subject area. You might find that 'A' level English is a bit of a struggle to teach, Al, for the simple reason that the amount of commonality between Chris' degree and an English degree is probably around 10 or 20 per cent. (Chris' degree doesn't cover different critical models or forms of literature--say, the differences between Realism and Naturalism, the characteristics of Elizabethan drama or the work of the modernists and the post-modern novel of the late-20th Century.) Most of the stuff you would cover in an English degree is located within the core modules; furthermore, there's a conscious effort to direct the Prose module away from an English Lit-based approach, in order to distinguish it from the English degrees offered within the college and by the validating universities. I'm sure you can do it, being the sharp-minded fellow that you are; but you won't have your degree notes to fall back on--your first year in teaching is made much easier when you can use the notes from your own degree as the basis for building your own lesson plans. If you do end up teaching 'A' level English and get stuck, give us a shout and I'll point you in the right direction or possibly even supply you with a lesson plan/lecture notes 
Last edited by Fitzgerald Fortune, 8/15/2008, 3:46 pm
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8/15/2008, 3:45 pm
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