This week, we welcome more trainees to our Introductory Teaching Assistant Programme. This intensive, two-week course aims to break down barriers for people with the confidence, drive and determination to work in education, but without the experience – or qualifications – to get a start in this rewarding profession via the conventional routes.
To paraphrase the late, great Tony Wilson (a fellow Salfordian), ‘this is Moxi – we do things differently here’. We’re fresh, focused and already making waves in education, by challenging long-standing and frustrating perceptions of education, by working with our fantastic partner schools to showcase different types of teaching and educational settings including alternative, online, one-to-one and small group provisions. One size doesn’t fit all, and this is especially true for people with the desire to pursue a career in education!
Historically, to work as a Teaching Assistant, you had to undertake and complete a qualification before you’d even set foot into a classroom to gain vital initial experience of the role, unless you were willing to volunteer. Moreover, you were expected to pay for this qualification yourself and complete it in your own time and, because of this, some great people were lost to education simply because of their individual circumstances. Even if people did do the training, the classroom setting wasn’t what they were expecting and so they turned their back on their potential calling in life… and the chance to positively change a young person’s life.
Our two-week Introductory Teaching Assistant Programme – like so many of our other training courses for new and experienced candidates alike – is the complete opposite of this!
It covers a range of bases and includes sessions with our team at Moxi headquarters (many of whom have worked in education themselves), shadowing within one of our partner schools and online learning modules.
Each candidate will spend around half of the course in a school, ensuring that they can apply their new learning – and understand its context – within a typical classroom setting. We create an environment that promotes respect, honesty and communication, which means we get to share experiences and perspectives.
Based on our experiences to date of delivering this popular new course, we’ve found that people have changed their perspectives; whether it’s about wanting to work in a mainstream or specialist school, or preferring a primary school versus secondary environment. Similarly, we’ve been able to remove further barriers by sharing different routes into teaching compared with the traditional ones.
Once the course is complete, successful candidates will then be supported by Moxi to find work, whether that be within one our partner schools, or throughout our wider network stretching across the North West.
For more information about our Introductory Teaching Assistant Programmes, or any other of our first-class training courses, call me today on 0300 303 4414, or send an email to a.oxton@moxi-recruitment.co.uk
