This morning I decided to treat myself to some me time, so I took an early Pilates class and treated myself to a pastry and nice warm coffee and a walk through the vintage market on the high road, now I’m back at my desk ready to catch-up with my homework for the PGCert class.

I’ve been feeling rather overwhelmed over this first week of term, being back at the university. A colleague and I have recently taken on the role of Course Leader on the Accessories course and there have been many ongoing issues to deal with. We had hoped this term would be plain sailing, but we’ve had to find last-minute cover for an absent member of staff, not only for teaching but marking too. It’s fair to say it’s been a rather turbulent start to the term. But hopefully, because we had time over the Winter break to sort many of the issues out, I hope things will settle down.

I enjoy having the additional responsibilities, and ensuring things are done thoroughly to deadlines, and I’m finding working with my colleague very rewarding as we work well as a duo. She has more experience than me teaching and has had to step into the course Leader position previously, so having her guidance is fantastic.

The additional concern for me at the moment is the fact that I’m pregnant, I’m currently 22 weeks with my first child, and I’m finding the whole experience rather distracting; It’s confusing, exciting and terrifying all at the same time! (It’s difficult to explain!)

During Workshop 1, Overall, I found it fun and informative, I must admit I was very nervous about joining, I somehow, I managed to join 30 minutes early (I got confused and thought the class started earlier!) but being early is not a bad thing, I guess.  The structure of the lesson was manageable, and I found the different activities went very quickly. It was great to meet other people in the same position as me in the breakout rooms.

My task in advance of the lesson was to read No.1 “The Design Critique and the Moral Goods of Studio Pedagogy”.  As a dyslexic, this immediately made me feel uncomfortable and slightly nervous, English is my second language, and reading very academic literature can be overwhelming. Unfortunately, because of the text font, the read-back function on my computer didn’t work, so I used Chat GPT to help me break down the text. This I found very useful and helped me digest the contents of the reading, I’m sure I will be using ChatGPT again in the future.

My thoughts on the reading – An insight into how practitioners in a university in the USA critique Students within their teaching environments.  I found it interesting to be able to relate to other teachers teaching a creative course similar to what I do. To hear their thoughts and feedback from their experiences and to understand better how other tutors try to create a safe and inclusive learning environment to encourage students to feel confident to voice their opinions and confidently present work within a group setting.  The tutors interviewed in the reading were mostly male practitioners (there was one female) and I did find myself relating to her experiences more often, this made me wonder if your gender has any relation to how you treat and respond to students.   As the paper was created pre-pandemic, my second thought was it would be interesting to hear more about how the pandemic has affected confidence within the workshops as I feel students are more hesitant and private since their time in lockdown studying solely on computers at home. I find Critiques with my students very challenging post-pandemic as the students appear more private and less willing to share and present their work within a group setting.