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This November, I was volunteered to work as a Design and Technology (support) teacher at Willowfield Secondary School (winner of the Artsmark Silver Award) for the Open Up programme. The students I worked with were in year 10 and they were preparing for their crucial GCSE and BTEC exams for the next academic year.
As part of their BTEC assessment, their task was to design a temporary classroom for their school. As a support teacher, my role was to teach and inspire the students to generate creative but sustainable driven ideas and then transform these ideas into working 3D scaled models.
This was a rewarding challenge as I was able to work with different students with different working and concentration abilities. Teaching them how to create ideas with driven concepts was the easy part but teaching them how to transform their flat 2D sketches into 3D working models proved to be difficult.
The students were faced with challenging questions such us - 'How would the building stand? What materials would be best suited? What materials best represent their ideas and how would they put it together?
Patience was a hard virtue that the students found difficult to come to terms with, as they desperately wanted to finish making their models. As a result, this left them with further questions towards the end. Nevertheless, it was good to see how they eventually overcame this.
Overall I must say the future of architects and the importance of sustainability look bright as the students are more aware of their environment and sustainable technologies compared to the students during my time at school. As for me, this was a great work experience which has taught me a scope of vital skills. Above all, the experience has revealed to me my undiscovered passion for teaching and this is something I would love to continue with in the future.
As part of their BTEC assessment, their task was to design a temporary classroom for their school. As a support teacher, my role was to teach and inspire the students to generate creative but sustainable driven ideas and then transform these ideas into working 3D scaled models.
This was a rewarding challenge as I was able to work with different students with different working and concentration abilities. Teaching them how to create ideas with driven concepts was the easy part but teaching them how to transform their flat 2D sketches into 3D working models proved to be difficult.
The students were faced with challenging questions such us - 'How would the building stand? What materials would be best suited? What materials best represent their ideas and how would they put it together?
Patience was a hard virtue that the students found difficult to come to terms with, as they desperately wanted to finish making their models. As a result, this left them with further questions towards the end. Nevertheless, it was good to see how they eventually overcame this.
Overall I must say the future of architects and the importance of sustainability look bright as the students are more aware of their environment and sustainable technologies compared to the students during my time at school. As for me, this was a great work experience which has taught me a scope of vital skills. Above all, the experience has revealed to me my undiscovered passion for teaching and this is something I would love to continue with in the future.
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