After deciding to take a gap year following A levels, I worked from March 2021 to July 2021 as a Teaching Assistant in different schools throughout London. I worked in a variety of schools, from primary schools, either special needs or mainstream, to special needs secondary schools. When I applied to do this opportunity, I was not fully aware that I would be working in special needs schools, but I still did this because I wanted to make my own money, I wanted to increase my independence and I saw that it was my responsibility to support these students, especially since they were so held back emotionally, socially and academically by the lockdown last year.

In April, one of the first schools I worked in was a special needs secondary school in South West London and it seemed good, as the teacher was very welcoming and helpful when I arrived. My opinion changed as I was not fully informed beforehand of a pupil’s condition, who should not be left unsupervised for any reason. It was my first time in this type of environment and I was underprepared since I had no training to handle a child whose needs were severe, so I left him alone for five minutes and asked the teacher to come take over for me. Instead of asking me whether I needed more support, he got his superiors to tell me about this and ignored me afterwards since he assumed that I was qualified enough to look after the child. After the day finished, I refused to go to that school again since I knew it was a huge step up for me.

However, in that same month, I worked in a school in West London where the teacher I worked with was informative throughout the day, allowing me to provide adequate aid to several struggling students within Maths, English and RE (religious education). On that same day, I sustained a nice general conversation with a PE teacher whilst we were teaching the children. It is a shame that I did not get to work in this school for longer because the setting was very welcoming.

The first school I worked in was in South West London in May. It was good, leading me to return for extra days later in May. One excruciating day tarnished my original thoughts. It began with overseeing a child, who I found to be challenging since he never stayed in one classroom for a long time, and he would screech if something went wrong. On the same day, I sat in history class with another child, guiding him by pointing at the work. The teacher forgot to tell me that this child did not like pointing, so he slapped my face and spat in my eyes. This was unexpected. The school did not address the incident formally because they said it happened a lot, so they did not offer official channels of support for me. Yet, one of the teaching assistants in that same class managed to comfort me to keep going until the end of the day.

Conversely in May, there was a school in North London where I helped two amazing classes simultaneously with their Maths and reading, even provided me a good meal during lunchtime. The highlight of the day was at the very end where I had both classes of 60 children telling me “Thank you Sam”, which really made me miss working here. Building on from that, there were numerous instances of teachers within the four months showing me genuine gratitude as I was able to support them as well as their students in getting them up to speed with the curriculum and ensuring the children’s wellbeing was priority.

Now, the very last school was in North West London in July could have been better. A twelve-year-old child disliked new staff members a lot that when he saw me, he clutched onto my t-shirt collar and kicked me while it took two adults in the class to separate him from me. Also, I changed another twelve-year old’s diaper. I found it awkward because aside from him not liking it, I failed at it since I did it so quickly to minimise the discomfort for him. The teacher, who I saw was unsupportive, threatened to terminate my agreement for the day if I did not do it.

On the other hand, I recalled different children telling me that I was the “best teaching assistant” they’ve had, which made me chuckle a little since I helped them temporarily and I was happy since it could mean that I worked well enough to warrant these responses, which certainly made my work more meaningful and inspires me to potentially continue to facilitate the education of children in other job opportunities.

I have not mentioned previously that I worked with an educational agency, which is a company that offers work to teachers and other staff within schools. Sometimes, agencies can pay their employees directly. In my case, they used an external payrolling business, which gave me my pay check with either a small or large amount of money subtracted for their fees; I was oblivious to this beforehand. Therefore, my income varied weekly depending on the school. Before I left them, I emailed a consultant in the agency about increasing my pay in order to compensate for travel costs and the time it took me to journey to the very last school I went to in July. I thought they would consider my request. They ignored it, so I spoke to one of the human resources managers to resolve this issue. They stated that they “did not truly agree with increasing my pay rate” and that they were “sorry for the miscommunication”. I was disappointed, so I reconsidered my time with them, and my work came to an end because I was starting university.

Contrarily, there was one consultant who I adored because he gave me amazing placements throughout London with excellent pay that considered travel costs and travel time, which made it hard for me to leave this job since he was one of the good people who I wanted to work with frequently since he did understand the difficulties of getting to these places.

I continued to work in these schools within the four months because despite the overwhelmingly negative experiences outweighing the positive ones, those positive experiences gave me the strength to endure the different challenges of each school and the ability to adapt to each environment in order to support the many children and teachers who needed me; this whole period truly allowed me to become more compassionate and to further mature.