Tamsyn Fraser

My main motivation for applying to be a Brilliant Club tutor stemmed from my background as a state school student and my understanding of how difficult it can be for students in non- selective schools to gain information and assistance in applying for more selective universities. I was also very keen to develop my teaching skills as there is limited opportunity in my department to do so, and thought that the hands-on and practical nature of my subject would be very easily adapted to engaging and effective teaching in schools. 

For my first placement I taught a mixture of year nine and ten pupils an introduction to zooarchaeology, which involved an overview of what information archaeologists can discover by studying animal bone. While planning the course I was very eager to include as much practical bone handling as possible to make the sessions more interesting, although I wasn’t sure how well this would be received! The training weekend was a huge help in terms of guidance for course layout and pitch, allowing me to create a course design and handbook which not only covered a great array of zooarchaeological techniques, but that I was also very proud of.

I was very glad of that preparation and planning when it came to the launch trip and the first tutorials as I was not sure what to expect and was quite nervous. However, it soon became clear the teachers from my placement school were very nice and extremely helpful – in this respect I was very lucky. Likewise, the pupils were all very willing to learn and to my delight engaged brilliantly with handling bone material, meaning that my initial nerves vanished almost immediately. It became a genuine pleasure to travel to the school every week for tutorials (even if it meant carrying boxes of animal bone on the tram!), and I was greatly encouraged by a very positive reaction from the school. I was pleasantly surprised by the speed at which the pupils understood the new concepts I was teaching them, as well as their ability to generate new and independent ideas about the material. However, what impressed me the most was their enthusiasm and commitment to the course despite other pressing academic obligations, for example they were willing to stay after school to complete homework I set. As the tutorials progressed a number of the pupils gained much more confidence, resulting in very engaging and dynamic group discussions where they were able to share ideas. Despite initial horror at being confronted with a 2,000 word report in a new subject, they also acquired a grasp of university style essay writing, referencing and marking, and many of them achieved a very, very impressive standard of work. In terms of my own development, I too increased my confidence throughout the course and by the end felt very comfortable teaching in a school environment. In addition, I learnt how important preparation is to teaching and how I can tailor teaching sessions to different ages and abilities. Most importantly, I think I gained a large amount of enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment from the process. 

I think my (and my supervisor’s!) biggest concern when applying for the Brilliant Club was the balance between the programme and my academic work, especially as I chose to undertake the process in only the second term of the first year my PhD. However, in some ways this was very useful as it provided me with additional training in teaching and constructing learning materials, which was expected of me in the department as soon as I arrived. Therefore, I was able to adapt the teaching techniques that I had developed with the Scholar’s Programme to undergraduate and master’s sessions which I think I would have found quite difficult otherwise. I am also somewhat glad that I became a tutor so early in my PhD as it meant I could design my course and plan tutorials with a lighter workload than I anticipate for the next few years, and I can then hopefully continue to use that design in my future placements. Finally, the tutorials were a great opportunity to actually have a break from work, make more people aware of my research and hopefully inspire the next generation of researchers, which in my opinion was a very productive use of my time.