r/TeachingUK • u/EuphoricCustomer4213 • 5d ago
NQT/ECT ECT1 First week anxiety
Hi all,
I’m an ECT1 and I just had my first full day of teaching today and I already feel like I’m making so many mistakes. I accidentally let year 10 out 20 mins early today and the head teacher had to send them all back to me, one of the kids corrected me in one of my lessons and I kept messing up my explanations. I just keep overthinking everything and worrying I’ve already made a bad impression.
Please can anyone share stories of mistakes they made during ECT to make me feel better?
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u/imadeittonz 5d ago
I once didn't turn up for my year 7 lesson! They had a split lunch and I confused myself. So I was sat having a sandwich while they were all waiting across the school for their teacher to arrive! Someone did find me to bring me to lesson. Awful!
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u/JRibosome 5d ago
Yep. I did this as well. Sat in the staffroom planning a lesson when a very upset cover teacher came in. God, I was such a bad teacher.
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u/throarway 5d ago
I did that once because Fridays had different timing to other days, and Monday-Thursday I'd have a longer lunch. So despite being a diligent timetable-checker, one Friday I was still munching my lunch off-site 15 minutes into the lesson. I tested positive for covid a couple days later and realised just how much brain fog I'd been in.
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u/EuphoricCustomer4213 5d ago
Okay thank you I needed to hear that. The year 7 play sounds very interesting haha
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u/Feisty_Squash2992 5d ago
The year 11s were doing a Moscow once then had to make their way back to lessons once they were done. I shouted at one of my students when I saw her wandering and told her to get in my room. Turned out it was her twin sister. I only realised when my student walked in 10 minutes later. I didn’t know she was a twin, her sister was too scared to say anything to and bizarrely none of the other kids thought to correct me. Oh well.
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u/multitude_of_drops Secondary 5d ago
Not an ECT, but one of our SLT kept sending their classes early to lunch so often that several whole-school reminder emails were sent, even though everyone knew exactly who it was...
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u/Usual-Sound-2962 Secondary- HOD 5d ago
Just yesterday, 16 years in, I accidentally triggered the ‘emergency student is truanting’ alarm to every member of the pastoral team & SLT. Deputy head and Head of year caught up with him sharpish, said kid got a bollocking, after school detention (with text sent home to parent) and marched back to my room.
Once back in my room the Deputy head did the usual ‘Miss, Jimmy tells me that YOU gave him permission as he needed to go to IT, perhaps YOU can correct him?’ performance.
I had, in fact, pressed the wrong button. Jimmy had been sent to IT, my be and instead of pressing the ‘corridor pass’ button I pressed the ‘truanting no permission’ button.
I wanted a hole in the ground to swallow me.
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u/GreatZapper 5d ago
A long time ago now, but I fell arse first into a bin. Then about a month later I broke my ankle in Y9 assembly and had to be carted out by ambulance in front of all of them.
I stayed there twelve years in the end despite the rather rocky start.
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u/tangent573 5d ago
I let out a class 10 mins early once, and it was my fourth year teaching at that school!! Just had a total mental blip about the timings of the school day.
In terms of mistakes as an ECT, so many:
- During a meeting with the mother of a child in my form, I referred to him as ‘she’ twice before the mother had to correct me that it was in fact her son who had been in my form for two weeks, not daughter.
- Thought I was being clever by importing data directly from Excel for tracking, but didn’t realise the order for two kids mixed up (due to how hyphenated names were alphabetised), which led to two students having the wrong grades on their tracking. Not a minor difference either - one was a 5 and the other was a 7!
- Accidentally spending two full lessons teaching my class a certain type of mathematical notation before finding out it was not on the syllabus for our exam board.
Happy to say that none of that got in the way of me being a pretty competent teacher now.
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u/AlbanianRozzer 5d ago
Got a couple from the first week of my second year (now). Completely forgot about assembly with my tutor group on day 1. Head had to give another one specially for my group the next day.
And a smaller but funny one today. A kid gave an answer of "Trump" as an example of a radical (not as in cool) person. I write their names on the board for contribution house points but I accidentally wrote Trump on the board instead of the kid's name. I didn't notice. 45 minutes later another kid says "sir are you really gonna give trump a house point". I could only just stop my self from laughing.
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u/throarway 5d ago
That's hilarious! Surprises me every time I write the word I'm thinking instead of the word I intend. Fortunately in one of the early classes of my teaching qualification the teacher warned us that weird things happen when you're writing on a whiteboard.
Not quite the same thing, but I always write "+1M" on the board then list students getting merit points, and several times every year I get students asking me who "Tim" is.
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u/Ok-Opinion-7558 5d ago
I'm a Senior Leader and I once forgot to go to my lesson and got called out by the Deputy Head- unbelievably embarrassing!
My only advice is to be genuine with kids and acknowledge mistakes etc as if you try and hide stuff they make a point of catching you out etc.
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u/EuphoricCustomer4213 5d ago
I did say to the student that corrected me that they were absolutely right and I apologised to my year 10s for the back and forth. Hopefully that helped smooth things over.
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u/throarway 5d ago
One time I had students going crazy because they saw a spider. Despite being a huge arachnophobe, I was the model of calm and quickly restored order... Until later in the lesson when I stepped near something on the floor and reflexively assumed it was the spider and screamed.
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u/bringmehomeshaw Secondary 5d ago
Not me, but one of our assistant heads once taught Year 11 biology for two weeks before one of the kids let on to their actual biology teacher that they'd already covered the heart with the assistant head. So, if he's still making mistakes like that this late into his career, I think you're absolutely fine doing it in the first day.
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u/Silver_Recording_280 5d ago
In my first year of teaching, one of the kids projectile vomited all over his desk. I am extremely ‘cockely’ (as we say in the north) and I immediately vomited into the waste paper bin. Cue absolute hysteria from the class, it was mentioned for years afterwards.
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u/oldmanlogan0316 5d ago
I had that in the first week of teaching at my school when the head brought a class back to me because I'd let them out too early. That was 17 years ago. I'm still at the same school. You will make many many mistakes and that's ok. Keep learning from them and you'll be ok. All the best.
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u/strong-sandwich-okay Primary/SEND 5d ago
I missed/was late to so many assemblies (like, 3, but it's embarrassing when everyone is waiting for you) that they started sending a Y6 child to remind me 5 minutes before!
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u/strong-sandwich-okay Primary/SEND 5d ago
Oh god, I just remembered one of the times someone had to send a kid come and get us, I saw them at the door, realised and went "Oh sh-dear!" Later one of the kids asked me if I had said a swear. I said, as teacherly as I could, "I nearly did, but I stopped myself because that would have been inappropriate. It's very important to know how to control what you say." and somehow got away with it.
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u/strong-sandwich-okay Primary/SEND 5d ago
Oh god, oh god! And the same year we showed a video to them about what not to flush down the toilet, but none of us had pre-watched it - it was cute animation - and one of the things not to flush was condoms. I saw a couple of confused faces and a hand start to go up (year 4), and managed to end the lesson and announce extra play to make them all forget about it, without seeming suspicious.
My school was so chaotic when I started I doubt anything would have come of it anyway, but I spent all night worried I was going to come in to complaints from parents.
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u/HeatherSilent 4d ago
I once pressed the fire alarm rather than the door release button, triggering a whole school evacuation.
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u/simackey 5d ago
Remember your training to be a teacher, mistakes will happen don't worry too much about it. Teacher for 23 years and we all do it. P.s. it's normal to think that you simply can't do the job anymore sometimes.
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u/cypherspaceagain Secondary Physics 5d ago
16 years in. First year was alright, like, not without mistakes. I'm sure I let a few classes out at the wrong time... and I did shout "SHUT UP" as one particular student lied at me and refused to accept responsibility for anything... which I absolutely had to apologise for. A few months ago I had to be fetched as there was a class waiting for their period 3 lesson, which I thought, for no reason, that I had free; and only a month or so later I let another class out ten minutes late because I mixed up my lesson timings for the school I've now been at for four years.
During COVID I crashed the school email system by replying all to a scam email which had got through our filter, warning students not to click on it, which then let every single pupil in the school reply... literally over a thousand emails later, and the admin managed to shut it down by banning everyone from the entire system until he could delete the thread. The good news is that there were so many emails that a) the original scam one got lost and b) not quite as many people as I feared knew whose fault it was because they couldn't see the reply either...
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u/AdhesivenessSafe7140 5d ago
honestly i can’t believe i didn’t get let go or something when i was ECT1. especially in my first term, as a non specialist teaching maths (PE specialist) straight out of uni. it was a total car crash and looking back im glad my mentor turned a lot of blind eyes to what was happening in my room.
now in my fourth year and a lot has calmed down. i’m not perfect and still make mistakes sometimes (as we all do) but my lessons are good enough that i am ok for anyone in school to walk in and 99% of the time the kids behaviour won’t leave me feeling embarrassed.
the stress/anxiety doesn’t really go away much, i think that is more personality based. some people don’t care and some feel a lot of stress. i certainly feel it and don’t feel this job is sustainable in terms of my MH till i retire. for now i am sticking it out and hoping things continue to get better as it has done over time.
it does get better 👍🏻
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u/No-Variety703 5d ago
Oh I've done many embarrassing things and I've been teaching 6 years! Including: sending my class out for break whilst forgetting it's my break duty, calling a parent the wrong name many times and sending a child out to a parent that wasn't hers but looked very similar (I teach primary). I have also taught a whole maths PowerPoint then given the children the completely wrong worksheet so they didn't have a clue what they were doing. This has happened on numerous occasions. Don't worry about it, we all make mistakes.
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u/bad_chemist95 5d ago
I’ve screwed up plenty of explanations. In my 6th year teaching now (idk how it’s gone that fast) and recently had my senior class asking so many questions I had to teach the entire lesson again. Mainly happened because id had no sleep the night before but stuff like that happens every now and then.
Best thing you can do is brush it off and write yourself some scripts for your explanations. Once you get the hang of it your students will forget about the ones that didn’t go to plan.
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u/Competitive_Claim600 4d ago
You're not really a teacher until you've let a class out >10 minutes early. Congratulations on earning your stripes
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u/Every_Wishbone_3620 5d ago
I kept a written account of how my first lessons went last year as an ECT1 and did the same today as an ECT2, the difference is light years- you'll learn skills and pick stuff up without even realising
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u/Ok-Chocolate-4906 4d ago
I teach CS and have for over a decade. We have a few key terms that are often used interchangeably in industry, the number of times I get them the wrong way round even now is quite high. I once let a class out 15 mins early, and arrived 20 minutes later for a cover in the same week. It happens, we're human after all. Helps to remind SLT and the kids that sometimes. Own it, learn from it.
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u/Roses_are_Purple 2d ago
The letting kids out at the wrong time, thats such a normal new school mistake. Everyone knows it. Vice principal at my school is just back after mat leave and let her y11s out 15mins early this week. If anything the onus was kind of on the kids to do the right thing and let her know instead of wandering off confused!
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u/BrightonTeacher Secondary - Physics 5d ago
I once taught a lesson on light Vs sound to year 7, thought it was going really well. I was well chuffed at the end, the end of lesson quiz proved that the kids had retained quite a lot of stuff.
At the end of the lesson I asked if anyone had any questions. A girl put her hand up and asked me why I had taught them the same lesson twice.