I’ve been working as a teaching assistant for several years but not be trained systematically. Wellington Teacher Training Programme helped me understand what teaching really is. During my training, I’ve worked with teachers across Wellington and Huili along with a variety of year groups. This is a rare opportunity to receive first class teacher training. The most important thing I learned from this Teacher Training Programme is there’s no best teaching but the best teachers best challenge all pupils.

The advantage of doing the QTS with Wellington is primarily the clear and simple practical, hands on approach that has been introduced for the trainee teachers. You get the chance to learn on the job and that really suited me. Making mistakes and being able to reflect on them right away as well as having the chance to do so with experienced teachers right on the spot was invaluable. Every one of my colleagues, not only my mentors, but the whole team always had an open door and supported me where they could.

I think this course offered me a unique opportunity to see the whole picture in terms of how western education and western teachers work, which is a totally different teaching system to the one which I have known and experienced here in China during the past 20 years. Assessing children by using Tapestry and EYFS curriculum gave me a deeper understanding of the kind of abilities children are capable of and what is required of them in western education systems. It also allowed me to know with more certainty, what parts of my teaching I needed to focus on to improve as a teacher.