Despite having been a teacher in a post-16 vocational training agency, nothing really prepared me for my first assignment as a teaching assistant (TA). I was employed to work exclusively with a year 7 pupil who had major emotional and behavioural issues – no other TA would work with him! I didn’t even have any special training for this role, so it was pretty challenging from the start. Eventually I did go on some emotional and behavioural difficulty (EBD) courses run by the local education authority (LEA), and managed to get the boy to tear 8 successfully. Eventually he went to a special school, but my year with him taught me a lot.
It was this introduction that led me down the EBD route and it’s now something that I specialise in. I have supported two very challenging pupils recently, both of whom I was able to refer to when I produced my higher level teaching assistant (HLTA) portfolio.
A boy, C started to come to Ludlow one day a week to join our pupil support centre. I’d already spent time with him in the local tuition centre and he visited us accompanied by his tutor . After a while his tutor stopped coming and it was down to me to keep C at school. One day he actually ran away but I knew he responded well to humour so I went after him shouting: "Hang on a minute, I’m having trouble with my zimmer here – slow down!" Amazingly, that stopped him in his tracks and I was able to coax him back to the centre. He was very volatile generally but eventually he responded to me after a few incidents like this.
Another pupil, a girl, D, was extremely able at maths but hated teachers – she just had a real thing about them. When she knew she could work in the pupil support centre she knuckled down. I was able to support her properly because I liaised regularly with her classroom teacher over what work to do, what resources to develop and so on. She really responded one to one, and eventually she got a very good grade at GCSE. She also managed to get all her English course work done in six weeks, which was amazing. She’s now doing an accountancy course at Hereford College, so that was a real success story and something that makes the job worthwhile.
