It’s 20 years since I undertook my first teaching practice, and I think I’m finally over the stress of it all. Funnily enough, I don’t remember a huge deal about it now. I remember the literacy hour (with a shudder) and I remember that we had a single A3 sheet for planning everything outside English and maths for the term, but not much about the actual teaching. What I do realise is how little it did to prepare me to become a good teacher.

I’d been chomping at the bit to get into class right up to the point where it was about to become a reality - and then everything else got in the way. For some reason, the university thought it a good idea to ask that we plan a unit of work before starting the practice, despite not knowing the children, context or even what the school had planned for the term.  As it was, my submission was failed on the first attempt and I was called in to meet with the English lecturer to improve my work before I would be allowed into school.

Whereupon the whole plan was ignored, and I tried my best to follow the school’s English scheme without causing too much damage to the children’s education. I watched the experienced class teacher, did my best to adopt her strategies, and then had a run at it. But even then, during my first placement, I was planning lessons at home - on carbon copy lesson plan sheets, as I recall - and then getting approval before I was let loose.

Trainee teachers need support in lesson planning

This strikes me as bonkers. I’d spent a year as a teaching assistant (not that common at the time), so was probably better prepared than most, but I was in no position to be making the millions of finite judgements that are needed to craft a good lesson. Much better would have been for the teacher - who knew the class and the curriculum well - to have decided on what I was to teach, and how best to go about it, so I could focus on the simple things like making my handwriting on the whiteboard big enough to read, and getting it all done in time for break.

The cognitive load when you’re first teaching is completely unmanageable. No doubt we all remember seeing teachers who made it all look so easy, but we remember, too, that overwhelming feeling of incompetence. Asking trainee teachers to plan and teach lessons from scratch would be like taking your first driving lesson through the city centre one-way system while the instructor sat in the back, making notes about your flaws to share at the end.

My recollection of my first driving lesson was in an empty car park. Minimal steering was involved, no gear changes, no other traffic. Just my instructor’s very clear instructions for using the clutch to move away in first gear - and then stopping to try again. Piece by piece over the weeks I was able to combine each new skill until I reached a point of competence that allowed me to pass a test.

I’m sure things have improved since then, but I do wonder whether we still ask too much of our trainees when it comes to planning lessons from scratch - and then we wonder why they cling to plans even when things are going awry. The trouble with the advice teachers often give about deviating from the plan is that new teachers have no other experience to draw upon. Much better, I’d say, to let the direction be guided by the experienced teacher until our novices have a bit more skill under their belts.

Michael Tidd is headteacher at Medmerry Primary School in West Sussex. He tweets @MichaelT1979